Radiate: Nexus World
by penniless1
Summary: Who said the Straw-hats only existed in Oda's version of the world? Meet the burned out ruins where the Vault-suit raiders, lead by D. Luffy, roam the irradiated landscape. This is not the OP that you knew...
1. Chapter 1

*crawls out of Endgame*

*is swallowed by Radiate*

Oh dear heavens. Another universe?

This is an old, dark, gritty, grungy, violent, blackly humorous AU OP fic I started writing ages ago. It's based off of OP and loosely off of the games _Fallout_, _Fallout 2_, and _Fallout Tactics_. Mutants, tribes, thugs, oversized bugs, undead ghouls, sexual deviance, abuse - all here, baby. The storyline has bitten me on the ass again, but be forewarned - this currently ranks lower than both _Endgame_ stories. Even if it may be linked...

Children - leave now. I won't be held responsible for ripping your mind a new one.

Thanks, MadRabbit, for helping me remember this.

* * *

The hair on the back of Zoro's neck rose up in a wave, causing the tribal's mind to jump straight from sleep to wakefulness. He couldn't sense an enemy, but there was a serious sense of _all is FUBAR _in the atmosphere. He slowly adjusted his head, eyes only slightly ajar, and scanned the container.

Luffy's half-booted foot was hanging down from the bunk above, but he could tell a lot from the way it dangled. Its swing was regular, almost like a heartbeat, which meant two things: the crew's captain was awake, and he was _thinking_. Given the captain's infrequent forays into intellectual arts, Zoro took that dangling foot as further confirmation that he should pull his 3 nanoblades closer.

The smell of nicotine increased slightly, which was not good. The horny cook loved to smoke, but he hadn't been an ass about it. He never lit his cigs in the bed area, and he made sure his last cig of the day was never less than 10 minutes before he turned in. Judging from the mild increase in tobacco dust, Sanji had only taken out a cig to calm himself. Zoro could barely see the white paper across the room, dangling precariously from the blonde thug's lips.

'4 of 9 accounted for,' the green-haired man noted to himself as a small furry body twitched next to him. He changed position very slightly to allow Doc Chopper up. The mutated reindeer was whimpering subsonically; not audible to most people, but a tribal who talked to inanimate objects was definitely going to notice. That noise was probably what woke him up.

The mother truck was still rolling along the broken highway as smoothly as could be expected, which meant that Franky was still driving. The android mechanic did not need as much downtime as the rest of the crew, so he was always driving. And judging from the faint sounds of laughter, the bitch-thief and past-reconstructor were in the cab as well. Music from a ukelele was also audible, which meant that Brooke Bones the ghoul was riding shotgun.

'That makes 8, including me. So that means...'

Towards the far end of the men's sleeping area, where a bunk had been riveted high above the door to the women's quarters, the gang's sniper and priest, Sogeking, was talking to himself.

Or rather, to the damaged rad-mask in his hands.

[~~~]

Watching the scene was disturbing. While Zoro was not one to judge anyone who talked to inanimate objects - that would be a pot calling a kettle black - he was unnerved. The mask was reminder of the Far Past - _hustory_ as Robin repeated many times when they annoyed her while she was busy. The rad-mask was supposed to be a salvation device for the humans who wore it during whatever calamity had tortured the world into its current, miserable shape.

Some good it did the skeleton it came off of.

The moonlight was streaming through the window in the clear wall of the container. The light played off of Sogeking's inky black ringlets, which were free for the first time in... It was not like Zoro to remember minor things like crew hairstyles, but he was disturbed to realize that it had been over a month since he'd seen those tangled dread-locs. Considering that long-nose's hair was his pride, Zoro knew something was seriously wrong for him to actually hide his mane.

One month.

One month since they'd saved Robin from the Brotherhood of Steel. One month since Sogeking had left the crew, after their small-line container, 'Going Merry', had hit rock bottom, busting her entire suspension. One month after they'd gutted her and buried her in a flooded ravine. One month since they'd had to acknowledge Sogeking's rantings about the small-line's soul. One month since Franky joined. One month since the damned fool idiot sniper ate one of his own bullets in an attempt to apologize for leaving them, even though he'd been there for Robin, for Franky, for all of them, in the clutch.

When Chop gave the word that the gunner'd survive, Luffy proceeded to go in and beat the shit out of him, then gave him Merry's horn and steering wheel.

Four days.

Four days since they finished off Ghoul City, napalm scorching their backs as they hauled ass; Sanji literally on fire and carrying an unconscious Nami in his arms; Doc Chop flat out bolting with his tribal brother on his back, using all six arms to hold on for dear life; Robin wearing Franky like full rad armor in order to get him moving, and Sogeking leading the way, that motherfucking creepy-assed mask cocked to one side of his covered head, Luffy piggy-backing and screaming laughter as their new ghoul friend (_say that three times fast_) flew above their head in a mess of body parts.

It took less than a day to send a being crazy in the world post-apocalypse. Ask Bellamy's bikers in New Vegas - the few that Don Doflamingo allowed Sarquiss to leave living. Ask the Vault-suit raiders - they were all lunatics passing as normal humans.

Not a soul went to sleep before Sogeking that night.

[~~~]

Luffy was a tribal from way, way, way, way, way, _**way**_, north-west. His great, great, great - you get the idea - grandfather, Red Shanks of New World Vault, came from far south, from what used to be Brazil up the coastline to Mexico, crossing east to west then heading up along the Rockies to where British Columbia used to be.

Now, Luffy was heading back.

His tribe - known as the D's to outsiders - had been wiped out by one of their own. Luffy only survived because he'd been on his manhood trials, deep underground in the rotting remains of a Vault sewer.

One day was all it took to lose everything.

An old woman who'd been the tribe's _gardener_ - guess they would have called her a New Age hippie drug-dealer some decades before - died messily outside the sewers, but not before she used her own blood and sand to mark the name of the sinner across the bleached bones of the sewer depot.

_**MARSHALL D. TEACH**_

It really didn't hit Luffy until he caught Teach in the act of raping Rouge's dead body.

Rouge was his aunt - his mom was already six feet deep. Dragon was his dad. Dragon was already long gone and presumed roach food. He'd done his trials, bred up Luffy's mother, gone hunting, and never returned. His mother tried to pop him out when he was a bit underdone, but he got stuck, so she was the one who went pop.

Anyway, Rouge was his aunt, but he loved her like a mother because she was the mother of Ace.

Ace was a badass, known down the coastline for fucking up gangs with nothing more than a flaming strip of oiled cloth wrapped around his fist. _Flame Fist_ they called him. See, the radiation made his skin real tough - the man was said to have tattooed himself with the foot-long stinger of a rad scorpion. And break it.

Flame Fist Ace had left the D. tribe three years before they were screwed up the pooch by Teach. Left his adoring kid brother/cousin/incestuous lover (_to this day, no-one knew which was true_) Luffy behind, told him to watch the tribe, and walked out into the desert with nothing but a loincloth, boots, and a ridiculous orange hat his mother made him wear.

Luffy had obviously screwed up. He certainly tried to fix it though.

One day was all it took to become a crazy sonofabitch capable of releasing latent mutant genes of stretchiness and insanity.

When Luffy had come to, Teach was gone, but the blood was thick enough to leave a trail. Hell, they say the fat fucker lost so much blood, the trail is **still** there.

Still, he was _alive_. Luffy buried Rouge and as many others as he could, then gave chase, his white manhood vest stained red over the ancient blue Vault suit from his illustrious ancestor.

[~~~]

Zoro found the man-boy hallucinating in the desert, loony from grief, thirst, and starvation.

The tribal had only been able to solve the thirst part at first - he didn't have much else on him but a nanoblade, a black headband and a kilt, seeing as how his tribe'd just exiled him.

Now, it wasn't the green hair that got him ejected - hell, it was a miracle he had hair at all. Not many in his tribe had that going for them.

Nor was it the six arms, three to each side. His tribe needed all available hands to work the piss-poor soil they were on.

It wasn't even the three heads, given that he could only operate one at a time, leaving the other two perched on his bull-like neck like wilting flowers.

No, Zoro got booted 'cause he told his pa that the hoe wanted to chop off his foot, 'cause it used to be a sword.

Green-freak could talk to inanimate objects - knives, scissors, guns, nanoblades; weapons, basically. It's pretty hard for a tribal to stay calm when his son is talking to the meager, blood-flecked weapon collection instead of people.

So out Zoro went, the first _Roronoa - _outcast - ever. Not like he cared; he already had enough company with his other two heads.

Yeah, apparently they **weren't** always asleep and he **could** use them all at the same time.

Anyway, Zoro found Luffy, Rozo (_head number 2_) located a watering cactus, and Orzo (_the last head...ain't ya counting?_) pointed out shelter. When the rad scorpions came out that night, he solved the hunger problem with his bare hands. He didn't even use all six.

Makes you wonder if it was the talking to knives that got him kicked out or the mutant strength.

Well, he wasn't actually kicked out. What happened was that the tribal leader sent the green-haired freak to look for his daughter - Kuina was her name - and her new husband; a snot-nosed brat named Helmeppo. Seems like no one had heard from the couple for nigh on a month since the wedding.

Except Zoro was hopelessly lost. Seems like it's real _**real**_ hard to navigate with three heads.

Zoro eventually found out what happened. Found Kuina's corpse under a dune in a long stretch of radiation-eaten desert near her new tribe. Helmeppo wasn't anywhere to be found. The dowry money, fancy leather clothes, even the diamond splinter between the back teeth in her jaw were missing too. Only thing Kuina had on her, or rather, in her, was a white nanoblade, the tribe's treasure.

Remember how I said he could talk to weapons? Yep. He talked to the blade, then took it back to his tribal leader.

Two weeks later, he was exiled - with a different mission.

One month later, Helmeppo's tribe joined Kuina under the dune. Zoro kept the nanoblade.

[~~~]

Zoro and Luffy trudged through a dessicated basin to an island named Syrop - a blot of land surrounded by a marsh. They met Sogeking there, all alone, singing to the blonde corpse of a young woman.

Sogeking's tribe - the Long-Noses - had been riddled by some jacked-up plague. It was long on killing and short on hope. The only good thing about the disease? You could live with it for more than a year before it drowned you.

Sogeking's mother had the plague while pregnant. The tribal doctor said she'd been blessed by the ancestral spirit, Yasopp, who'd deigned to lay with her in her sleep and beget himself a son. He was born in the height of his mother's symptoms - the tribe even dug her grave when she went into labor. Some sort of fool luck made her plague dormant for four years while the witch-doctor and half the tribe died. Sogeking never got it, which made him an fringe member until his mother coughed up blood.

He was welcomed into the main tribe as one of many orphans.

He was a scrawny boy-man, fearless and sly with wicked aim. He led the orphans on daily scavenging forays, learning how to fix some of the broken machines they'd find along the way. He married a blonde girl named Kaya - her parents were the leaders of the tribe before they got stewed during a bad famine.

She had to admit, they were pretty tasty.

They watched over the numerous orphans as the adults dropped like flies. The brats believed that they were immune and lived life thusly - doing anything they pleased as their parents slipped from memory almost as quickly as they'd slipped from life.

Orphans aren't immune to bullets, though.

One night when Sogeking was out looking for mushrooms (_Kaya's favorite_), he slipped into a trance. He watched, helpless, as the Black Cat raiders attacked the tribe, Kaya leading the orphans with her butchering knives.

As soon as he awoke, he used his own latent mutation to _**speed**_ back into town, but it was already too late. All he managed to do was kill the lesser riders before they could have their way with Kaya, then hold her in his lap as she bled out into the marsh.

He buried the others, but something kept him rooted to the area. He washed her corpse everyday and sang to it at night until Luffy and Zoro stumbled onto him. Luffy's hail was the first thing to move him from his spot next to Kaya. He cut off a lock of her golden tresses, braided it around a black loc, and fell in with the other men to reveal a rare treasure - a small-line container that he'd got working not long before the raiders came. It was full of food - they were supposed to leave with all the orphans that night.

Sogeking honked as Kaya waved goodbye.

[~~~]

* * *

**_Author says:_**

Next favorite genre: apocalypse survival films. Be very afraid...this is not the OP you knew.


	2. Chapter 2

Oh look, there's more!

I think that's what scares me....

* * *

The gang stood, slouched, or crouched in front of the Thousand Sunny and tried to figure out what side of Mars they were on.

The expanse of terrain stretched before them looking even worse than the desert they'd just driven through - at least that had nomads, tribes, wayward hermits, bleak farms and desperado cities. There was little sign of greenery or plant life of any kind above ground in the forthcoming wastelands - it was far too dusty for that. The sun was many degrees hotter now as they approached the former borders of California and Mexico, having driven through a now barren watercourse.

Rio Grande, we hardly knew ya.

"We gotta cross that?" Luffy asked Nami again. He was the only one unmoved by the dust-laden maw of doom that opened out towards the horizon. The orange gnoll licked her whiskers and nodded glumly.

"Where we're tracking them is that way, for sure, or I can't navigate worth shit."

Well, that sealed it. Everyone knew that Nami, irrespective of her **many** faults, could find her way anywhere, even blindfolded with her head stuck up her own ass. That was as true as her overgrown clit (_the only dick any of the able-bodied men would willingly suck_) and her dislike of clothing. Even in the aftermath of - well, just about everything that had happened - it took a long argument and a near gang-rape to convince the gnoll that it would be in everyone's best interest if she covered her snatch and her crack. The boobs were too hard to hide - besides, they were often used as decoration, pillows, headache relief and enemy distractions.

"Upsy-daisy, ladies," Zoro grumbled, Orzo and Rozo scowling as he hitched his pack higher onto his shoulders. "We need to get supplies before we even **think** of crossing that dried shithole. Doc Chop, with me. Curly Duck and Long-nose, together. Nami 'n' Nico - try to work, not fuck. Bones, keep Cap't under control. Franky, whaddya need?"

The android was already decoupling the container from the vehicle with his prodigious strength, his long toolbox in his other metallic hand.

"Oil, bros and hoes. Coolant, cola, and batteries too."

Zoro shook his heads at the android's peculiar programming as Sanji puffed his cig.

"You heard fungus-scalp over dere," the thug cook snapped while adjusting his half-boots and ducking their lieutenant's reflexive blade slash. "Any ting edible, potable, or luggable is up fer grabs. Skin a few muties if ya hafta. _Mes_ _belle filles_ need proper food ta make it 'cross dat _merde_."

"Move out!" Orzo barked as Zoro climbed up on Chopper, who'd already switched back to walking on all fours. The reindeer started trotting away, tossing his rack of antlers under Zoro's hands.

"Also look for anything medical!" the baby of the gang cried over his withers. "Bandages, Rad-X, Geiger counters! You should know the drill guys!"

The rest of the gang grumbled in acknowledgment as they split up.

[~~~]

Soon, only Franky, Sanji and Sogeking remained by the dismembered carcass of the mother truck. Franky was busy under the truck while Sanji finished his inventory of the gang's food supplies. Sogeking had the rad mask on top of his head like a macabre cap, the strap tight under his neck. He was looking out over the wasteland once more.

"I can't...I can't go...Stop! I've got _can't-venture-into-the-wastes-cause-I'll-die_ disease...Seriously, can't you feel that you won't get out alive? Do you really want to-"

"Whazzup, Nose King? Ya ent ready fer dis?" Sanji drawled as he dropped a hand on the sniper's shoulder. He felt the younger man flinch and was puzzled. Sogeking was never skittish - hell, he ran into danger head-first, right behind Luffy, Zoro and the blond himself. Many times he thought the boy-man had a suicide wish-

Sanji shook his head. No need to go down that chain of thought when you knew the answer.

"Stop that. I told you, Sanji-kun, we're always ready!"

The blond let Sogeking turn away and stomp into the not-so-barren wilderness behind the truck, a curly brow drawn down into a thoughtful frown as he followed reluctantly.

'_Who da fuck is we?'_ the chef pondered as he slouched along, trying to ignore the itch in the webbing between his toes. His one working blue eye glanced at the rad mask, and the hardened thug (_and part-time cannibal, but that was most of them_) found himself shuddering right up to his feathers. He couldn't forget the way the mask had shimmered in the moonlight the night before, winking in time to the conversation. The cook was no priest, but he had the instincts of an oft-preyed upon creature. Something shitty was about to hit the proverbial fan.

[~~~]

The 'Going Merry' traveled for well over a month with the three men (_or five, if you count heads_) squeezed into the cab. Barring the incident where Sogeking tried to teach the other two to drive and ended up destroying a village, they had an easy trip until they stopped by the smoking remains of the Baratie diner, where they met Prince Sanji the Duck.

See, Sanji was born looking human, save some minor issues: golden feathers instead of hair with long, curly eyebrows, scaly legs with four webbed toes tipped with savage claws and latent swimming skills. In long leather pants and a pair of half boots, no-one could tell the difference!

...That didn't fly by his father. He took one look at the child, trussed up Sanji like a game hen and sold him to a traveling tribe.

Fortunately, they worshiped birds.

He became known as Prince and he lived a life of relative ease - all he had to do once he had froth in his morning piss was give up his tender ass to the tribal men before they went warring.

Did I mention Sanji generally **hates** men?

Anyway, in the middle of receiving an 'offering' from the tribe's half-mutie leader, Gin, a raiding group descended like the hounds of hell, followed swiftly by a sandstorm from the edge of the Rad-Line. End results? Sanji had a well-oiled asshole, Gin's amputated cock, a basin of holy water, no food, and a burly raider with a broken leg for company.

Warning: never ask Sanji if he has something stuck up his ass. That's suicide by foot.

Caught without food or most of their clothing, Sanji and the raider decided to work together to stay alive. Beyond all hope the raider was relatively paternal and heterosexual, so he taught the boy all sorts of survival skills, including how to how to kick ass in the most literal sense and eat just about anything.

Starting with half-mutie dick, chased with gangrenous human leg.

Sanji and that crippled raider stuck it out for years, building the Baratie with their blood and sweat. They drafted other ne'er-do-wells and built up a reputation for the best pig-rat stew anywhere. Beings came from everywhere to eat and Sanji became a slut chasing after every not-male diner - willing or unwilling. Yes, life was good till Don Krieg's raiders swept through the area and torched the place while Sanji was out hunting more pig-rats.

Trust him to return at the very moment that the others arrived. He took one look at the gutted diner and his feet started talking. It took them a day to wear him down, plus another two nights to talk sense into him. After that, they let him bury a charred carcass with a red braided beard and a rival gang's brand on the forehead, he gathered his cooking utensils and joined them.

[~~~]

Little side note: Zoro almost lost his life after meeting up with Sanji. He still blames the duck, though it's utterly irrational, just like the rest of their relationship.

How? Oh, the jolly green jerk-off (_as Sanji likes to call him_) had an unpleasant encounter with the Rad-Line's own Hawk-eyes Mihawk.

I can hear you asking, "How could a small-fry tribal catch Mihawk' eyes?" Simple, quite frankly. Have you ever watched a high-kicking man-duck and a three-headed, three-bladed, six-armed tribal fighting? It's beautiful I tell you. And Mihawk, despite his general lack of external sex organs (_oversized cojones not included_), loves beautiful things, like all other men do.

He just has problems taking them _alive._

That story leads to a whole 'nother side joint on how Luffy, Zoro, Sogeking and Sanji became real close, but I want to tell you how they became the Vault-suit raiders. Suffice it to say that the scar bisecting Zoro's chest was their first symbol of unity in the face of relentless pursuers.

Just don't say the word '_cock 'n' candy,_' whatever you do. That sends Zoro, Rozo and Orzo into a blind rage, and the other three men into giggling fits that are downright creepy.

[~~~]

Soon after escaping Mihawk, Nami the gnoll literally ran into them. Actually, she says it's the other way round; no-one is dumb enough to challenge her on it.

[~~~]

What's a gnoll? Are you shitting me?

Gnolls are humans with orange or red fur, short muzzles, huge canines, claws and a fully functional set of bats, balls, and catching mitts - generally they're hermaphrodite hyena.

Yes, I do mean **fully functional**. Pervert.

[~~~]

Nami, like most gnolls, doesn't know her real parents, but her adopted mother was an ex-Sister of Steel named Bellemere. Her older sister was a tangerine dryad named Nojiko, I think...anyway, Nami and her family were living peacefully in the burned out husk of a city, tending Nojiko's tangerine orchard, when mutie raiders came in and tore up their lives.

Muties, being ten times stronger than everything and immune to most radiation, usually think very little of just about every other being, probably because they are also very stupid. This gang, however, was led by a sly mutie named Arlong. Arlong basically told the citizens their choices: hand over money, a warm, wet hole, or fertilize the earth.

Most everyone went along with money except for Bellemere. That woman was hardcore Steel - she didn't ask for, or take, any quarter. She hid Nami in Nojiko's orchard while she found her old armor and loaded her plasma gun one last time...

'Coure the bitch died - but she took half of Arlong's gang with her. That earned Nami and Nojiko a twisted sort of respect in Arlong's eyes when he found them. He willingly took the orange gnoll under his wing, provided that she handed over 100 million chips or her virginity within 10 years to free the whole town.

Mutie dick is like a baseball bat, and Arlong loved a tight fitting lover, even if he killed them, so Nami became a thief in the surrounding cities - a good one at that. She'd earned 90% of the money when a Brotherhood of Steel unit commandeered Nojiko's grove, body, and the money Nami'd been hiding. The dryad resignedly serviced them as Nami ran for Arlong-

-Who was in on it the whole time. Nami barely skipped out of Dodge with her pussy intact.

In fleeing, Nami ran smack into the Going Merry. She's lucky Sogeking had quick reflexes, or she would have been Sanji's road-kill stew. They scraped her up, tended her bruises and listened to her story, their eyes burnin' mad by the time she was done.

Please - for all that is good and holy - do **not** tell four men whose lives have been ruined by gangs and betrayers your pitiful tale about back-stabbing raiders. Seriously, the blasphemy they'll commit will stain the land for eons to come.

Nami watched as these humans took on muties without pausing and proceeded to smear them across the city. Luffy in particular was a beast, trouncing Arlong by bludgeoning him to death with his rubbery head, all while laughing. They rescued Nojiko from the Steel, earning them raider status and the loyalty of the world's most clever, lust-inducing, penny-pinching gnoll navigator.

They loved her right back.

[~~~]

With Nami on board, the gang set Going Merry on course to the Rad-Line, hunting down an array of raiders that kept destroying the sprinkling of villages and tribes throughout the Blighted Lands. After an episode in a Brotherhood of Steel outpost called Loguetown - an experience Sogeking often referred to as tiptoeing through Hell with kerosene half-boots on, no smoke-mask, and bad eyesight - they made it into the Rad-Line.

Let me guess? What the fuck is the Rad-Line, right? You're a damn yokel, ya know that?

The Rad-Line is where the nukes first wiped their asses on the planet at the end of the Far Past - a long corridor of radiation vomited from bombs that were stronger than anyone had any right knowing how to make; stronger than a few suns too. Most muties alive come from the Rad-Line, along with a whole host of other variations on life, including Doc Chop.

[~~~]

Chopper was a caribou - yes, that is too the same as a reindeer - living with Mother Kureha on the last mountain in the Rockies, above a small city named Drum.

Nami'd come down with radiation sickness (_a side effect of exposure to muties_) and the old woman was rumored to be sitting on a stash of Rad-X as high as the mountain itself. The boys had been worried sick, sleeping in the same side of the 20' container with her, their combined body heat easing her pain. They'd searched high and low for a doctor before hitting Drum completely by accident (_okay, fine, it was Zoro who pointed it out, same difference!_).

Zoro and Sogeking guarded Going Merry while Luffy and Sanji got Nami up the mountain, avoiding a host of Lapins (_yeah, the man-eating bunnies - you do know something!_) and an avalanche. Sorry - Luffy and Nami avoided the avalanche. Sanji got smacked by it. If he weren't holding on to Luffy's hand at the time, no-one would've ever found the paralyzed blond again.

Somehow, Luffy made it up the mountain with both Sanji and Nami on his back, his hands and face bleeding under the cruel winds of a nuclear winter. He met Doc Chop at the top and begged him to help his new family.

Luffy knew better than most that his mind couldn't stand the loss.

Chopper took them to Kureha, who nursed them all back to health in her unique way. After eighteen hours, the Rad-X purified Nami, Sanji's avalanche-fractured spine was reset and Luffy's wounds were bandaged.

The moronic former mayor of Drum decided that it was a perfect time to reclaim the city he'd abandoned when the Blackbeard raiders roared through.

Wapol. There was an interesting fellow. He'd been born with no mouth, so they'd fashioned him a metal set of jaws, which he used to eat anything - he had no mouth but he had a cast-iron stomach.

Wapol and his advisors thought to themselves, "Hey, let's go attack our former citizens while a group of no-name raiders are in town just to impress them with our strength!"

That wasn't how it worked out. What happened instead was, "Hey look! Injured no-name raiders and a reindeer throw Wapol's ass to the Lapins and scrap his snow-mobile for parts!"

The gang took a real shine to Chopper. The three year-old (_about fifteen human years_) was naive and sweet and so loving, even though his background was no better than theirs - chased out of his herd as a runt, into the heart of the radiation on the mountain, where he mutated rapidly into a humanoid. He was small, but he sucked up radiation and knowledge like a sponge, with some useful transformations as a result.

So when Kureha wisely chased them all out, they held out their hands to carry him along.

[~~~]


	3. Chapter 3

Sorry this is so late, whole family was sick and I'm just about ready to maim someone at work. Ever found it hard to write when you're pissed off to high heavens?

* * *

Robin peered down, down, down through the dense, cottony clouds, mesmerized by the darkness of the sky beneath the white fluff hugging the cliff face. It was so compelling...

A cool, implacable hand held her back. She looked up, startled, but not visibly ruffled.

"Hey Nico, you don't wanna be doing that, sis."

Franky raised his eye shades to reveal his unnaturally blue ocular processing units. They swept over her in a somewhat clinical manner, swiftly assessing her health status. She shivered nonetheless, and pulled her hand away. He let her do so, his metallic fingers trailing against her bark with a steely hiss.

"Android-san, would you be able to gauge the height of this precipice?" the dryad inquired coolly. Truthfully, Franky was the only gang member besides Luffy who really scared her - he always seemed to be able to see through her schemes. It was as if he understood how she worked better than even she might know.

The android shrugged noncommittally, hesitantly - one might even say that the shrug spoke louder than words that she really didn't want to know how far down the escarpment went. Robin shivered again for a moment, but quickly suppressed it.

"Ohohohoho, looks like we're going to need to make like birds to get to the next side," Brook Bones interjected, strumming his guitarro as he reclined on the arid ground. The others were back in the truck, sleeping while the 'oldsters' took the night shift. It was a job that the three currently took very seriously - all the younger gang members were still suffering from a number of severe wounds that they had from Ghoul City. The shift would give them enough time to come up with a plan for the gang's most pressing problem; how to get across the massive canyon below without abandoning their new mother truck, the Thousand Suns.

Franky had made it abundantly clear that he was not leaving the truck. No. No way, baby-bro-sis. _**No. **_After the last disastrous attempt to abandon a truck, the rest of the gang quickly relented - Franky was an android, so if he decided to rupture his nuclear power core, not one soul alive today could fix him. They would not be able to count on an abnormally solid skull as a safety device.

Plus, the Thousand Suns was truly home, even more so than their former small-line truck. The fifty-foot container and the four-seater cab allowed each gang member to claim a private spot for themselves outside of the sleeping quarters. Many of the everyday brawls and quarrels between the younger men had instantly vanished once everyone had somewhere to retreat, be it roof-top or galley, cab-top or infirmary or workshop. Speaking of workshop...

"Has Sogeking still not gone to bed?" Robin asked, narrowing her eyes very slightly in disapproval. The priest and gunner had really been lacking in sleep lately - at one point during their march, he did not even respond when they called his name. Brook, one of the fastest on the ship, was forced to grab the long nose with his mummified hands and yank him into the cave they had used for shelter from a small dust devil.

"I'm feeling especially untactiful this week. Maybe it's best for you to go check on him, Nico-sis," Franky suggested as he sat down with his empty toolbox and a disorderly heap of tools, gadgets and gizmos. The android was usually very close to the gunner - both of them loved to take apart old machines and rebuild them even better (_and occasionally, working_). However, when it came to human emotions - to say that Franky was out of his depth was an understatement.

Nodding absently, the dryad sent one of her branches out to peek through the window. Brook continued to strum his guitarro while giving Franky a speculative glance.

[~~~]

"Is it really that bad where you are right now?"

"What? You've never seen the ocean?"

"No way! I could never do that! I have _can't-stand-20-foot-scorpions disease_!"

"...You gotta let me go sometime..."

Robin watched, intrigued and vaguely disturbed by the quiet conversation that Sogeking seemed to be having with himself. The ocean was something that had not been seen in a number of decades, so how the young long nose could have known anything about the mythical expanses of salt water that once covered most of the world was a mystery...

"You really think it's easy where I am?"

"Yeah, but you haven't fought Admirals yet."

"Tactical retreat my ass. Over a cliff?"

The dryad felt her apprehension increase as she realized that the room was indeed empty except for the sniper and his current fashion accessory obsession, the cracked rad mask. The gruesomely broken visage was propped up on the workshop table in front of Sogeking, who seemed to be alternately caressing the mask and working on one of the gang's radios.

"I didn't want to be brave, I just wanted to be stronger for my friends!"

"I know I asked you for help, but you have to go back!"

"I'm not that weak! I c-can too help them!"

"Let me out!"

Robin watched in amazement as the rad mask jumped and fell off of the table with a loud clatter. A very morbid and horrifying thought came to her mind instinctively, but she shoved it away as nonsensical. Closing her cone and withdrawing her branch, Robin decided that she would observe the sniper further before drawing conclusions.

And then everything was fucked ass over backwards as the last she saw of Sogeking was a pair of broken wings tumbling down the escarpment with a loud, despairing wail that broke the searingly blue sky.

[~~~]

A dryad. How do you explain a dryad to some bumpkin who ain't ever seen one? I'mma give it ma best shot, but I ain't much of an expert.

Dryads are the plant people. Seems like some of the people who managed to survive the bombs shitting radioactive bricks on them began to taken on the characteristics of the plants nearest by. How? Whaddya mean how? "What characteristics?" Well, lemme see - the need to photosynthesize every so often, for one. Leaves, bark, ability to regenerate like a plant - yeah, pretty much all that stuff.

Right, just so you know, plant people are as diverse as they come and they're basically a whole new species with about 7 million new races. The dryads can be male or female, asexual to hermaphrodite and no-one knows for sure if they can make babies with humans, or even if they make babies at all. Most of the dryads alive came from the End of All. If there are new ones, they sure as hell didn't tell anyone.

Oh, right. They're morbid as all fuck. Probably because they eat from dirt most of the time and we all know dirt is just a short way of saying "dead, inert, rotted turds."

[~~~]

Anyhow, Robin's a coastal redwood dryad. She used to live somewhere west of the Rockies in the former state of Cali-for-ni-a; a community of hippies in redwood trees _communing_ together. She was only a girl when the shit hit the fan - her parents were long dead by the End of All. She lived in the blown-out house of her aunt until she could stop screaming as her skin hardened, her hair became a rustling mass and her toes began to seek well-composted soil. About the only thought that went through her head during those times was "Why?" Why did she change? Why did the world governments encourage these wars? Why weren't her parents here?

Then, her groping hands found The Book.

If ya ain't noticed by now, Robin's a real smart girl. She'd done taught herself to read before shit flew south, so she used The Book to help her through the pain a bit. Soon, she was all wrapped up in the intrigues and assassinations and trades of lives that was the wreckage of _hustory_.

So, after a decade where she mastered her new form and re-learned how to walk with roots for toenails, hold things, speak, and eat with her mouth, Robin went in search of _hustory_ with the ruthlessness of a Steel and the morals of a raider. The more she uncovered, the more she needed to know - unfortunately, she wasn't the only one learning. Somehow the Brotherhood of Steel learned that she could read the old language.

That made her dangerous. Her curiosity needed to be reined in before she stumbled onto the Truth.

The Brotherhood managed to follow her home after one of her _hustory _raids, then they flash-fried that enclave like ants under glass in the sun. Robin only lived because a huge ass redwood tree fell down on her in such a way that she was sheltered from the horror.

But she still hears her dryad, ex-hippie friends screaming and burning some nights; she smells the charring of her precious _hustory_ notes.

When she finally crawled out and saw the destruction the Steel had wreaked, the tree that had fallen on her, one of her favorites, was white with cold ash. She screamed and cried to the heartless sky for almost a week, then she made her way out of the seared grove and into the desert of Chihuahua looking for an answer in a long-lost monument to the past - well before the End of All.

After running with a group of raiders that made the Vault-suits look normal and a near-death experience at the hands of the raiding captain, all she learned was the towering disappointment of finding out that the monument meant fuck-diddly to her.

Only by chance, as a stowaway on their truck, did she finally find her answer; Luffy and the others, who she came to love more than _hustory_.

[~~~]

Franky was a real android - he wasn't born, he was made by the greatest engineer/mechanic team since the End of All, Tom the Don and his woman, Heart.

Tom the Don was one of the few half-muties around in those days - not too sure if he was turned by radiation or if his mother had a black hole for a pussy, cuz Tom was a **big** man. Anyway, he and Heart, a full mutie, had trouble getting kids after their first and only one, so they decided to make their own kids - Iceburg and Franky.

Iceburg was first. He's a'ight, but the man's got no emotions - see how they figured out what ta name him? He runs the mech city of Last Vegas. Franky, on the other hand, has too many emotions and the guy ain't shy about showing them - he'll cry one sec and punch you in the gut the next. Mood swings like a bitch.

He also has a disturbing obsession with adding explosive weapons to any and everything - himself included.

Now Tom was special - he scavenged and rebuilt the Oro Jackson, the mother truck of **the** most kick-ass raider ever, simultaneously proving that he knew how to read old plans_ and _had a ton of them squirreled away somewhere. So, of course, the Brotherhood of Steel couldn't leave him well alone. After bringing Franky and Iceburg in on some trumped up story, they told Tom that the only way he could stop them from melting his sons down as scrap metal was to build a railroad and a train that could cross the Waste between Last Vegas and Steel headquarters. They even managed to sound convincing, but only after he'd been stopped _**just**_ short of tearing the Last Vegas base off its foundation.

For the record, casualties were **not** minimal.

So the whole family gets together and creates the longest ass railroad line since probably the 1800's. Then, in typical fashion, as soon as the line is done and proven to work, those bastards in steel double-cross the Don and execute him for building the Oro Jackson. The half-breed's death seemed to have fried a couple of Franky's synapses, cuz the idiot went and tried to stop the train during its first run. He stood there, body open, ready to catch the huge electric engine full in the stomach. He screamed and raved and vowed to disband the Brotherhood with his teeth if he needed to, just as the train slammed...

...The next thing he knows, he's in the back of a busted small-liner truck with a long-nosed kid crying in the dark. As he sits listening to the kid, he slowly realizes that it was the sort of crying he did the day Tom died.

Franky figured the first step to revenge might be to help this kid. Now, in return, Luffy's gang helps him.

[~~~]

Brook Bones is indisputably a ghoul - the man was already old when the End of All came, and he _**just kept getting older**_.

Ok, technically speaking he didn't live eternally. He was a first lieutenant in New Mexico's rogue army and his whole company, save his captain, died one by one from radiation poisoning shortly after the nukes ended everything - but that didn't actually keep him in the ground. See, unlike his captain, who was shipped home when he came down with the most fucking obscure and lethal case of ebola on the planet, or his company, of which he'd buried each and every last man, Brook died with his eyes to the sky. Just keeled over in the middle of strumming his faithful guitarro after he sank his ceremonial sword in his belly. He'd heard of some of the stories out of the east coast - he wanted to make damned certain that when he died, he stayed dead. Vampirism just did not appeal to him. Something about glowing while shitting at night pissed him off.

As you can imagine, when he opened his eyes to the same, grim tableau a year later, it took him a _**long**_ while to stop screaming.

About 50 years later, when he'd had a lot of practice at being completely batshit insane, bored and unfailingly undead despite salt water, starvation, stakes in the sternum, garlic, scorpion stings - you know, all the shit that can normally kill ya - he decided to try rationality for a while and headed out further west. After about a year wandering on the road, he came to Ghoul City - the dwelling place of nearly every single ghoul on the West Coast. No sooner had he gotten used to the smell...

[~~~]

Look, really, I don't know nor do I give a flying fuck about how a skeleton can smell or hear or scream or anything. I tell all that shit to sod off when fucking dead people start _moving_, period. Honestly...

[~~~]

Anyway, Brook basically just got to the city and he made the big mistake of offending one of the Four Horsemen - Moria the Gecko, the zombie who lorded over the city. The guy pretty much hounded him all day and night for _five years_, riding his coattails like a dick in a chick until Brook skipped town for a bit to let the freak cool down.

Only to get mowed down by Nami, Sogeking, and Doc Chop, who were cruisin' on Franky's latest invention, the Automo-tricycle - please, don't ask me.

Well, the accident obviously doesn't kill Brook, so he gets dragged back to the mother truck for introductions and 'observation,' if you can trust Doc Chop's version of it. Luffy almost immediately asks him to join the gang and, shock of shocks, Brook **disses** him. Says thanks, but no thanks, amigo, unless you can get rid of Moria.

No, my friend, you ain't hearin' it wrong. That ghoul, who obviously retained the balls of a frigging water buffalo, challenged D. Luffy to make him join the gang.

And Moria? You've seen what little's left of Ghoul City, and you know who Brook rolls with. 'Nuff said.

[~~~]


	4. Chapter 4

Bonus tale for y'all. Enjoy, dearies! :D

* * *

You, in the back, what the _**fuck**_ did you just say?

"Who's Vi-?"

_**Fuck it all**_, keep your voice down before someone hears ya!

Who told you that name? Don't you know that name is **tab**-_fucking_-**oo**? Fer chrissakes, shut up and let me tell you about it, or you'll find yerself on the wrong end of a rubber-nanoblade-bullet laced-duck foot-electric shock-antler pronged fatality move the minute you leave this bar.

[~~~]

Vivi Nefertari. She was a real gem - a full-blown, complete and very female human with sky blue hair that the Vault-suit gang'd rescued from bounty hunters when her cover got blown. She was thrown full-force into a bunch of too-strong, long-lonely, too-worldly, too-naive, half-cracked youngsters that'd just started calling themselves _'family'_ instead of _'gang'_, so once they heard her story, they immediately took up her burden as if it were their own.

Lemme set this out real plain, so it don't fall out between yer ears. Vivi was the daughter of Cobra - yep, the same guy as happens to rule that huge city near the beginning of the Rad Line. Remember a while back when that place was full of rebels 'n' soldiers and on the edge of bein' snuffed out? Yeah, well, you ever hear who broke that up, or how it ended? Mm-hmm, that's right, you ain't heard jack-shit for a while now, ain't ya?

Don't get me wrong, the city is still there, barely; the whole population's still wearing black. It's just that the Vault-suits had a huge hand in that salvation; they just wish they hadn't sacrificed so much.

Robin still feels like she isn't worthy, but after all that the gang has done for her, she's smart enough to keep her trap shut and believe in Luffy anyway.

[~~~]

Basically, Vivi went underground after she heard that the rebels were led by her former childhood gang leader, a shady nanoblade punk named Kohza, backed by a real sheisty individual. She'd done some digging through her personal heavies, Pell the Fell Falcon and Chaka the Jagged Jackal - turned out that the name _Baroque Works_ kept filtering up to the top of each instance, especially the major smuggling scandal that had people thinking that Cobra was selling methless to make money.

[~~~]

Methless? Oh baby, you don' wanna touch that shit. That drug makes lions out of mice, then eats their livers for breakfast. If there is one thing that shoulda been burned at the End of All, methless is it, but the damn smoke woulda probably killed more of the population than the rads from the nukes.

Let me put it this way - _**muties**_ are afraid of taking methless. We clear now?

[~~~]

So now her dad's being called some sorta drug kingpin, and Daddy's wittle girl decides to get to the bottom of things - even goes through a gangbang just to make the cut and give the boss man a little leverage over her. She rose through the raider ranks with the sort of ruthlessness that'd make an ash viper proud, along with her Daddy's right-hand man, Sax-man Ingaram, then she got _just _close enough to figure out who the boss man was before bouncing out via a failed mission.

Her escape was not without consequence - Ingaram left his wife, Earthenware, a widow when he helped Vivi flee from the millions of bounty hunters on her fine ass. If it weren't for the fact that Ingaram gave the Vault-suits some much needed hospitality the night before, her bones would be 3 feet in the desert floor or swimming in a jackal's belly by now. But, since all the Vault-suits are real particular about "Do as do does," they obliterated the bounty hunters, grabbed her and ran like hell to the Going Merry, which soon left the hunters to eat their dust.

[~~~]

Vivi was on the small-line container for a goodly time - she was there when the gang actually found an irradiated rainforest, she was there when Nami fell sick, and she was one of the ones running from Kureha's house when Doc Chop joined up. Maybe if she'd told them what the old witch told her...

Ah well, all in the past now.

Anyway, when she told the Vault-suits everything, they were all gung-ho to kick ass and chew bubblegum - and since no-one in the gang even knew what bubblegum was at that point...

Of course they mowed 'em down. They went through _Baroque Works_ top agents and the big bad boss like a plasma knife through bone - not to say that it was a cakewalk, though. The big bad boss turned out to be the Grand Line's El Cocodrilo, one of the 7 Deadly Sinners along with Hawk-Eyes Mihawk. Moria was one too, as well as leader of the Four Horseman gang - D. Luffy's got a real knack for offing Sins.

Right, so the boss was Cocodrilo and all his subs were more mutie than human, which meant bad times all around when the final reckoning was done. Kohza came out of hiding and sparked the civil war, only to end it within a few days after he realized how close he came to being a serious puppet ruler. Cobra and the Jagged Jackal lived, but Vivi...

There was a bomb - some misplaced relic of the Far Past - planted on a truck that was going to drive off a ravine and drop the payload right dab in the middle of town. Sogeking was all for driving it away himself, even with Rozo and Sanji dragging him away by both of his dislocated shoulders, but Vivi slipped out while they were arguing about who should have the dying honor. From the cliff hanging above them, the last time they heard Vivi's voice was when she called out to all of them, screaming her thanks and love for each of them. The last they saw of her was her left fist pump in the air, showing off the war tattoos that Zoro and Sogeking had pain-stakingly drawn on all of their left arms. Then she hopped in the truck, brought it sputtering and roaring to life, and drove it away from the ravine and as far into the desert as she could go before the explosion.

[~~~]

Wisps of blue hair fell on their upturned, shell-shocked faces for a long time.

[~~~]

Robin, otherwise known as Cocodrilo's Miss 0, was terrorized by the noise that threw her mind back into the aftermath of the End of All. She fled his cooling body and hid in the Going Merry for days while Luffy and the others grieved and recovered.

Eventually they found her, long after they left with Cobra's blessing. Through some fast talking, she manages to stay and slowly, slowly she feels accepted, but until the day that they saved her from the Brotherhood of Steel, she still wore a penance-collar of silky blue.

[~~]


	5. Chapter 5

Thanks to Tor, I'm on a roll! A little sideline for the tale with **lots** of explanations - at least _**I**_ think so. :D

* * *

"Baso-papa, why did you call it the Grand Line?"

The ancient, garrulous, foul-mouthed story-teller paused briefly as he guzzled his mug of Ninjin's Pick-me-up Ale. He swallowed loudly, smacked his lips together, then swatted the pox-faced brat with his cane.

"Shaddup, ya mutie-cumshot," he growled, his _'good story'_ language slipping off faster than a whore's panties for 100 chips. "Shit like you wud'na even been born iffin yer mama'd learn'd ta swallow. D'ya want a story or not?"

The brat was dragged down into a glowing pile of street refuse by the other urchins and all his questions were beaten out of him. Baso spat approvingly and bit off another piece of mad-weed.

"'S nuff ya wastes o' sperm, geroff him. Cum'er, Traf, an' keep this old ghoul warm."

The sallow lad threw one last punch in the face of a crazed, alligator-skinned redhead kid in a fur coat before cuddling next to the old geezer. He flashed his middle finger - an archaic insult the greying ghoul had taught them - to another bony blond urchin as he enjoyed the dubious honor of getting a nibble of the hallucinogenic leaves.

"Lemme explain some things to ya young'uns," Baso-papa began again. "This fuckin' scab of rock we live on 's got _mind-mires. _Dem's places what's a little funny - they do things ta yer thoughts. People's what's gone through 'em don't come out too right in the head. They sees things they shud'na - _lives_ they shud'na seen."

"Skies?" Bazil asked with unusual interest, actually pausing in the middle of turning a trick. The patron snarled and went to cuff the lad, but Bazil's surly half-sister, Bonnee, neatly punched the fat pederast in the jewels before knifing him in the belly. She piped up as she looted the dying man's pockets.

"Grasses?"

"Forestsss?" Drakex snorted, the lizard-like lad licking his lips as he and Cappon sharing a line of poppyseed powder.

"Na, bet it'd be food," the barrel-shaped boy bantered before Apu elbowed him, shoving him aside for a hit off the line.

"Music!" the gangly boy laughed, a high, crazed sound, only being held down from runnin' into the street by the half-mutie,Urug.

Baso-papa got a wistful look in his good eye - the other one'd filmed over decades ago.

"Oceans," the ghoul whispered dramatically, his hands thrown out in an expansive, all-consuming motion that drenched Child and Rellik as they grinned and played with a pair of rusted knives. "More pure salt water than all of us can piss in in a lifetime, and nothin' to stop ya. Islands, green an' white an' red an' all sortsa colours what ain't in a rock. Trees an' grass an' food, so much food, an' people what's not got to fight fer it mos'n time."

The children's eyes were wide with amazement, and they gathered around the ghoul's prominently bony knees. His sharp, cracked teeth were bared in the grotesque imitation of a grin, his whole visage shining eerily as his blood-red drink spilled again, thick and heavy over the children's upturned faces.

"What's the catch?" Traf asked warily, licking the salty, red liquor off his cheek. The taste reminded him of the bloody, raw, pig-rat liver he ate on his 10th birthday, a rare treat from the other urchins.

"The catch?" Baso-papa echoed. "Good boy, smart boy. Baso-papa won't bite ya no more tonight. Listen ta Traffie-boy, dearies. There's always a catch."

The ghoul shrank back down to his normal, wizened size. Sighing loudly, he motioned to Ninjin for a refill. The bartender grimaced, but nodded anyway.

"The catch, ya young'uns, is simple," Baso-papa gasped after he gulped down Ninjin's 'elixir of youth' as the zombie called it. "You can fall in, or you can fall _through_."

"Fall through?" Urug woofed slowly, "That don' make na sense, Baso-papa."

In the dim light of the bar, the ghoul's good eye took a peculiarly _alive_ sheen.

"Stupid boy. Maybes you shud'na talk when people's ain't done yet. Come ta dinner with me tonight an' I'll learn ya the difference."

Urug winced and the others drew back from him. The bulky boy would have to find the old ghoul a good, lively dinner if he didn't want to feel those teeth himself.

"Listen ta me, dearies. Mind-mires 's called lotsa names - silly swamps, thinnings, fey fens - they mean the same thing. Doorways."

* * *

_**Author says:**_

Let's see how observant you folks are. Can you connect the dots yet? Who's who? What's what?


	6. Chapter 6

No-one can remember how it started - maybe no-one really _knew_ how it happened. One minute, there were nine people at the edge of a chasm, handmade gliders stretching end to end for an indeterminable length. The next, a howling, whirling twister was behind them, spinning out of the leaden, early morning sky above. The winds raked at them and at Luffy in particular - he was being driven and dragged and pulled over the cliff, where the gales whistled like old-style express trains booming through the valley.

"Luffy!" Zoro screamed, his wings almost strangling him, his hands wrapped around the hilts of two of his nanoblades as he used them to claw frantically at the ground. Desperately, despite the blackness of oxygen deprivation, the gang's lieutenant tried to inch closer to his vanishing captain. Rozo found it damned suspicious that the tornado was so intent on pushing _against_ the rest of them, but pulling on their leader.

"Hang on, ya tumbleweed!"

And then the Duck was there, clawed feet ruthlessly savaging the closest wing, even though his own arms were bleeding as his hands scrabbled for purchase in the cracks on the desert floor. The cook's own glider had ripped at his shoulders horribly, the straps burning and splitting the flesh and feathers underneath - Orzo found himself sickened at the smell of cooking bird for the first time ever.

The hair on the tribal's heads suddenly stood up like the needles on a cactus; three seconds later, he ducked, temporarily blinded by the bright flash so close to him. Another bolt of lightning tore at the other wing.

"This storm is a straight-up freak-bitch twister!" Nami howled, her staff aimed at her lieutenant. Her snarled fur locked her into the contraption, but she was still able to duck and dive through calm pockets of the wind as she took aim again.

"I can't tell ya where'll go next! 'Bout as natural as a mutie! Get Mean Green free! He's the best hope for gettin' Luffy up! Robin, how's he holdin'?"

Robin's branches creaked wildly in the wind, her arms and feet strained by the rapid growth she had forced them to endure just so she could remain standing with Chopper's help - the young doctor's muscles rippled and strained as his radioactive form began to eat at his underlying physiology. Luffy's hands stretched to clasp onto her own woody appendages, but splinters from the uneven, unnatural extensions had already begun to stab through his palms. The blood was making everything slick.

"Make it fast! He's slipping!"

Franky grabbed B. Bones by the feet as the ghoul started floating past him. Together, acting as an overpowered light-blade, they hacked at the remaining hang glider behind the lieutenant, the rudder falling away as the laser sword disintegrated the supports.

There was another wretchedly hard squall and suddenly, Luffy was smiling at them.

"Too much trouble, y'all," he chirped, still audible over the hellish screaming of air around them. "I'll see ya when y'all get there!"

He let go Robin's hands.

[~~~]

"_**NO!"**_

They yelled as one voice, but to no avail - their cries were drowned by the mass of air pounding on them - all of them, except for Sogeking.

"_**Sogeking Scurry!**_"

The rest of the gang barely felt the disturbance of the air as the shadow sped past them, running flat out into the wall of air. There was a momentary pause - a brief second where all sound died and the winds calmed to nothing more than a gasp - and then the return of sound hit them like a physical blow to their eardrums.

"_**Reject!**_"

The boom that followed left Zoro and his brothers' ears bleeding for weeks and his sense of direction far worse than ever before - they were the only ones who were not able to cover their heads as the sonic wave washed over the whole lot of them. Despite the pain rendered by the sound, they were able to keep all three pairs of eyes open, which allowed them to see the impossible.

Sogeking - wearing that bloody stupid mask again - was now flying towards the chasm, one arm dangling oddly away from his body. Shards of some rock or shell or hardened, radioactive soil scattered behind the sniper and priest like the dust trail behind their mother truck as it zoomed down the highway on autopilot. Zoro's eyes almost fell out of his head when the Long-Nose angled himself over and _into_ the heart of the tornado, which had now followed Luffy into the ravine.

While Zoro was the only one who could see, all of the others could hear the cry that echoed off the valley's walls.

"_**Usopp's Super Strong Spider Web - Trapdoor Version!"**_

The question of who exactly Usopp had been would remain with them for a long time - but not now. Now the gang would be too busy watching and listening and _feeling_ a miracle and sacrifice as they occurred at the same time.

"_**Impact!"**_

Beyond all their hopes, a large, wire-mesh sack - much like a spider's egg-sac - rose up into the air in a graceful arc, falling with unerring precision back on top of the ridge where they had all been standing before the storm began. The bag bounced and jumped as Luffy's roars and screeches strained through the fabric, intense rage painting every syllable.

But it was too late - only Sogeking's echoing wail remained.

"_**You can't ever die - not here, not there, not anywhere, Luffy~!"**_

Luffy emerged from the sack, panting and wheezing as his anger choked him. As he started to _crawl-fall-creep-__**scrabble-run**_ to look over the edge, the other Vault-suits joined him, tearing limbs from paralysis and wresting senses from oblivion.

All they saw were broken wings tumbling over and over and over in the heart of the whirlwind.

"_**Stay alive~!"**_

[~~~]

They all peered over the ledge, wide-eyed, even as the sun began to sink in the distance. Luffy stretched his hands as far as possible, feeling along the walls of the cliff as Franky and Zoro sat on his legs to stop him from falling over again. Robin strained to use her roots to their fullest, nodules feeling deep into the earth and along the rocky walls as Nami and Sanji raced to provide her with as much water and nutrients as she could take without stretching the rations too thinly. Brook and Chopper went back down the slope, trying through sonar and scent to find any other possible trail down to the bottom that did not involve a two week-long trek on the highway behind their long-gone mother truck.

All efforts for rescue ceased when Luffy's hand came up with the shattered mask - blood fully flecking the inside goggles in a macabre spray.

Without a word, Luffy shook his lieutenant and engineer off of him and pushed himself upright. Swaying slightly - it was the first time anyone'd seen Luffy go without food for more than two hours, far less eight - the gang's captain trudged back to the remains of their fire from the night before.

He sat there, alone.

Eventually, he took some of the gritty, barren soil at his feet into his hand and let it trickle into the mask.

He rubbed the sand slowly - fiercely - into the blood stains, until all of the grains were tinged red.

He poured the sand out and began again.

For the rest of the night, the Vault-suits sat around that fire and watched Luffy polish out every scrap of blood, dirt and matter out of the cracked and crumpled mask. Finally, with the orange-tinted moon hovering in the night sky like the diseased eye of a fly, their captain spoke.

"I'm goin' after Sogekin' - tonight, not later. How many gliders we got?"

Franky didn't even have to think hard - he knew the answer, having spent the remainder of the day tearing each of them down and rebuilding as many as possible with the parts he could salvage.

"Luff-bro, we got four at your say-so," the android replied with a quick salute. Luffy nodded and turned his head up to count the stars.

"This is a rescue, but it's as dangerous as going in a mutie outhouse with matches. Who's coming with me?"

The leader of the Vault-suits sniffled loudly when every hand, hoof, paw, feather, tine, bone and bark stretches upwards. He managed not to cry, but just barely.

[~~~]

In the end, Zoro made the decision of who would go down the escarpment with Luffy. He ruled out the two women due to exhaustion - Nami was still sparking with static electricity and Robin's face was lined with stress cracks. Franky would need to stay to fix or create the remaining gliders and track the truck, leaving Brook to act as lookout and backup.

Chopper needed to come as their doc - if there was even the remotest chance that Sogeking was alive, the reindeer would be needed to work on the sniper as quickly as possible. Sanji and Zoro were going because there was no telling what had caused the storm - if something happened to Luffy and strength was needed, those two would definitely have it to spare.

No-one bothered to mention how to get anyone back up the escarpment - if Luffy and the others didn't send a radio or smoke signal or some other message within two evenings, the rest of the Vault-suits would follow the trail of the truck - the remaining rations would be just enough for them to get through, provided that their last maps had been correct.

They didn't stop to think about the fact that one of them already might not need rations ever again.

As the rescue team geared up at the edge, Nami loped to a pile of degraded boulders and skittered up to the top of the stack. She sat with her tongue out, her whole body stretching to feel for any more freak storms. Franky attached one of his ear units to Luffy with a thick strand of cyan blue hair-rope before strapping him in to the reconstructed glider.

The wind immediately began to pick up as soon as the belt was fully tightened. The men looked over at Nami, who could only shake her head and whine futilely as her hair remained flat, not even remotely ruffled.

Luffy pushed Franky back and let the wind shove him along, Zoro, Sanji and Chopper quickly forming up on his flanks and behind him. The rubber rad-boy was grinning his lunatic leer - the one that was licking Arlong's blood off his teeth and spitting fiery hell at Moria. The evil sheen was over his eyes again and his fighting mania quickly infested the rest of the rescue squad.

"Oh baby, you want me so bad?" the captain simpered to the crazed sky, shaking his hips in a way that spoke to his not-so-innocent innocence.

"You want me love you long time? Well, you can have me - if you can handle the price!" Luffy screamed as the tornado descended once more. "Come on guys! Sogeking's waiting!"

The four men laughed loudly, whooping like coyotes as they took running leaps off of the cliff.

[~~~]

He imagined that he opened his eyes - had to be his imagination, of course, because it was still as dark as the crack of his ass. Anyway, he imagined that he opened his eyes and wanted to cry as the blackness still loomed heavily over him, his body only a faint memory.

"Hey kiddo, long time no see."

He turned around as quickly as he could, somehow unsurprised at the lack of legs underneath him. He stretched his eyes wide as a patch of the darkness began to shuffle its way over to him There was a brief gleam that scattered steely motes throughout the completely mired landscape, but it ended swiftly. The shadow slithered closer, leaning into the sniper's face, peering intently.

"Wow, it's really been a while. You're best feature hasn't changed at all though, or else I wouldn't be able to confirm it."

He may have been legless, but he still had his hands. He flipped off the ambulatory shadow.

"Y'mean I still don't get away from nose jokes in Purgatory?"

Death stepped as close to the new ghost as he dared - secretive mirth filled the entity's eyes and the stark, embalmed laugh lines around his mouth began to dance.

"Well instead of trading insults, you can always follow me, get acquainted with your new digs, visit a couple pubs and then tell me a few stories from Above, hrm? Whaddya say?"

He shrugged and left the now unfamiliar, almost totally spent body behind, along with a small shot made of a rare silver dollar and salt and...a memory.

_'Keep him busy until the others come...You can do it, Captain!'_

"Lead on to the nearest undead and spirit-loving establishment, good sir Death."

[~~~]

Luffy and the others found that the tornado had a band of calmer, warmer air inside its funnel. With some minor adjustments, the four Vault-suits found themselves gliding effortlessly down to the canyon floor in a tight spiral just out of sight of the narrow, rocky walls that wanted to render the wings to kindling.

As they floated down, they tried their best to pick up signs of Sogeking's own precipitous descent. Every so often they saw scraps of cloth that may or may not have been from the pious sniper, but nothing conclusive came up until about half way down, where Luffy's seeking digits had found the mask.

They steadfastly ignored that torn, bleeding patch of scalp, with its sparse, matted locks.

Soon after-wards, they realized that the wind was slowing, making it harder and harder to stay aloft. Very swiftly it became a situation where luck would just have to be on their side - they couldn't stay in the air any longer and would plummet through the remaining darkness at any second. While rough, they managed to stick the landing without breaking any bones on the jagged, rocky floor of the crevasse. Without a word, they stripped off the gliding gear, and Luffy made an attempt to contact Franky.

"Tinman, this is Dorothy, come in Tinman. Over."

"Copy Dorothy, this is Tinman, we read you. Over."

"Eh ya! _Capitan_! We got somet'ing here!"

Sanji's bellow caused feedback on Franky's line - everyone above closed in on the android as they tried to follow the pounding of the rescue team's half-boots.

"'S cave," Zoro and his brothers grunted. "It go pretty far back too."

"Don' look good dat - we got sludge right dere," Sanji grumbled.

Chopper whined loudly, his hooves clicking nervously on the rocks.

"I smell a predator - _big, big_!" he moaned loudly. "But I also smell Sogeking - he's bleeding real bad. More than a night in there an' he'll go septic - he'll die and go ghoul or not die and mutate if we can't get him out real soon-"

"By tomorrow evening, Sogeking will be back with us," Luffy intoned - everyone heard the long-anticipated cracking of knuckles and the popping of large joints. "We're goin' in, my bitches.

[~~~]


	7. Chapter 7

He _ran ran ran_ through the **dark dark dark**, his breath too lean, his _heart heart heart_ hammering like falling rocks-

"Sogeking! **Where are you?** **Hey!** Who's that yelling like me?"

His voice echoed- choed- oed- back to his ears. He was alone.

Underground.

Alone.

A sudden panic crossed his mind as he pounded onwards in this dark - so much like the sewer full of nuke-roaches where he'd completed his manhood test. Would they still be alive when he got back up? Or would their bodies be dismembered and strewn across the desert when he finally tasted sunlight again?

D. Luffy shuddered as the dark caressed him. This had not been one of his finest thoughts. He should not have left his crew behind, but...

"They're strong enough."

It was important to say that to himself. They _were_ strong enough. Hell, Zoro was at least as strong as his captain - maybe stronger. Sanji was faster and way more clever - if he ever dropped his 'commandments' on using his hands, he'd be lethal to the rubber man. Sogeking was a blur when he wanted to be, bobbing and weaving and sucking up damage like a sponge until he could make his "one shot, one kill" victory. Nami was far too cunning and sneaky to even get _into_ a fight she didn't think she could handle - plus her lightning was getting so strong that he was starting to feel it. Doc Chop had saved them from all sorts of stuff, making him uncomfortably aware of the fact that the reindeer could easily dissect any of them. Robin had been a top-ranked, Rad Line-notable assassin - she could kill him with a branch in his throat before he could even wake up. Franky would outlast him for sure - uranium-steel alloy bones and a nuke core made his destruction pretty much impossible. And Bones - well, Death had come for B. Bones and coughed him back up - Luffy was certain that Death found _him_ tasty enough to swallow.

'_Ace was strong enough too...remembe-'_

Luffy slapped himself across the face. Hard. And again.

He breathed deeply, turned his ear to the sound of his own voice - less rough, a bit innocent, not mad_mad_mad and bad**bad**bad and sadsadsad. The sound of his own voice yelling at someone or something to bring his big brother Ace back _**right now**_.

"_**Oi! D'ya hear me? Gimme back my brother!"**_

"_**Ace is my bro! I saved him from the marines and I'll get him outta here too!"**_

The voice was saying everything that Luffy wished he could have said to Ace - _for_ Ace. Sure, he didn't know what these 'marines' were and Ace sure as hell wasn't his brother (_that was just nasty, man!_), but he still found the emotions roiling through the challenging, braying voice to be every bit as familiar as his own.

So, he ran on.

[~~~]

Sometime before the gang hit the Chasm - that's what they had started to call it, that long ridge of nothing that rode high at the end of what used to be Costa Rica - sometime before that, they all met Ace.

Everyone had wondered about 'the most wicked man' of the East after meeting his young- well, all bets were still on lover, so that's what they went with. People always wondered what sort of bastard it took to put a leash - real or otherwise - on Luffy. Obviously he was a truly badass motherfucker, because no-one else alive had managed to cage their captain, but was that literal? Was he ugly? Hot? Was he totally stupid and moronic outside of a fight, like their captain? Was he a glutton, like Luffy? Was he a mutant, being in the Wastes so long?

So many questions were floating in the air about this mysterious Ace. Unfortunately, those questions never got answered - at least, not in the normal way.

[~~~]

"No. It's not him. It's some other poor bastard from Uncle Whitehorn's gang."

Luffy took down the desiccated, decapitated, highly tattooed, decidedly _normal,_ male human body that had been strung up on cross of steel girders and riddled with so many bullets that it could only have done in by a Brotherhood of Steel firing squad. He carefully removed the skin from the rest of the body - something that none of them thought he even knew how to do, seeing as how Luffy would eat almost any shit with the fucking fur and teeth and feathers still on - then burned the body in the largest bonfire the Vault-suits had ever made. They'd used up almost all of Sanji's cooking wood to do it - and the Duck had made Luffy find a replacement for every branch burned, best believe it - but for one of Uncle Whitehorn's gang (_May the Wastes cover his bones - that man was the second greatest raider ever!_) it was the least they could do.

None of the others ever knew what he'd done with the skin. And, when Luffy went off from camp at nights to beat off and cry in equal measure, he made sure no-one could find out. He would be very careful to roll the skin as small as possible after a night spent caressing the faint "ASCE" on the left arm and curling up on the large, purple, horned silhouette on the back.

[~~~]

Luffy ran on in the dark - sometimes he swore that he heard Rozo and Sanji calling for him, but he ignored those phantom sounds. The only thing he needed to listen out for were Sogeking and that voice that was himself and yet not-

"Luffy~! Hold up!"

Screeching to a halt, the irradiated rubber man turned everywhere looking for Sogeking, blatantly ignoring the fact that the darkness was virtually impenetrable. After several seconds of useless scanning, even with eyes stretched widely and rotating his neck 720 degrees, he started to shout out for his sniper.

"Sogeking! Where are y-?"

**BAM!**

"Oh ow...fuck me, why the hell am I always jumping from so far up?

Stars spun in both men's eyes until Luffy was finally able to pull himself from under the crumpled body of his complaining, long-nosed sniper. After shaking his head clear and feeling the large knot on the back of his head, Luffy turned to hug Sogeking tightly, tears of relief streaming down his face.

"Uwaaa! Sogeking, what the hell, man? Why the hell did you save me like that? You _swore_ you wouldn't try to kill yourself, didn't you? Don't you _ever_ do any of that crazy ass shit ag-"

Something made Luffy pause and look - really look - at the long-haired, nut-brown, yellow glowing body in his arms. He screwed his eyes into a contemplative scowl while his pinkie massaged his frontal cortex via his nose. After a moment of careful scrutiny, Luffy wiped a large booger off on his half-boot.

Then he began smacking the shit out of the marksman.

"You- ain't- Sogeking! You're- fuckin'- Usopp! Where tha- _fuck_ is- Sogeking? Who- told- you- to _fuck-_ with _my_- bitch's body, huh?"

Usopp returned each and every punch thrown, then scratched and _bit _Luffy as hard as he could before the overpowering rubber freak could beat him to Death. He'd already had more than enough of that particular mind-fucker, _thankyouverymuch_!

"Hey, ease off and go _fuck_ yourself!" Usopp snapped, reaching the end of his tether. "Sogeking wanted to save your _motherfucking_ life so I helped him, to do what? Get _fucking_ trapped in his half-dead body? Leave him to help my crew and drink some weird, wormy liquor with Death? Hell no! Death is on my captain's ass and _you_ are going to help **me** get to them."

"Like hell no!" was what Luffy was about to scream. What he did, however, was shut up, because the barrel of Sogeking's own weapon - _Kabuto_, the rifle that had been pieced together with Spiral Batts found in the remains of the crashed flying vault they'd ventured through shortly after Robin'd joined them - was now tucked neatly under the rubber man's chin. Anyone and _everyone _with an interest in living knew that the sharpshooter's fingers had hair-trigger reflexes - no matter who was in his head.

'_One shot, one kill'_

"Like I said," Usopp growled, "You're going to help me save _my_ Luffy. I'm not that different from Sogeking when it comes down to the important stuff."

Luffy gave the sniper his wall-eyed look, his pinkie finger absentmindedly beginning to stray to his nose until the barrel of the rifle pressed a little harder into the skin under his jaw. The Vault-suit captain grunted in acknowledgement of the threat, but his eyes had gone elsewhere, flitting over the sniper's self-illuminating body.

Sogeking - no, Usopp in Sogeking's body - the marksman's legs were horrible, mangled lumps of flesh and bone, bloodied and dirtied by the extensive distance that he'd already dragged them through the cave, as rough as the cavern bottom was. Usopp noticed the glances; he briefly studied the gory disfigurement that his glowing body (_why the hell was he glowing?_) highlighted, then shrugged in dismissal.

"S'not like I can feel anything down there anyway, but it does make it a bitch to go where I need to and bring Sogeking's body _and_ gear as well. So hurry up and haul me up!"

Luffy nodded mutely while the marksman slowly removed the rifle. Turning, the Vault-suit captain stooped down to let Soge- _Usopp- _climb up on his back. The rubber man carefully wrapped his hands around the battered flesh that had once been knees, then waited for the sharpshooter to pull up the deadly rifle into his ragged, shaking hands and brace it on Luffy's shoulder.

"...Who we aimin' ta kill, Usopp?"

As Luffy started to jog forward again, Usopp rummaged through the fanny pack that Sogeking kept his ammo clips in. He then cocked and loaded a clip into the rifle's chamber with disturbing familiarity before responding.

"Anyone or anything that stands in the way. Including - _especially - _Death. Not that way, Luffy! First, what we're gonna do is get the rest of the cre- gang. It's about time you trust our strength and stop doin' so much shit on your own."

[~~~]

As D. Luffy ran, the other spoke. He spoke of a different world, covered in water, not sand, and islands, not craters. He spoke of another him, with a different quest - a different goal. He spoke of those who gathered - of like (_Nami and Money, Sanji and Food, Brook and Music_) and unlike (_What the hell would Robin be like with flesh? Zoro with only one head?_). He spoke about their triumphs (_the thought of another ArlongWapolMoria made his head spin_) and their failures. As he listened, Luffy found himself wondering why he and this other captain had always insisted on running ahead alone when everyone that Usopp spoke about was at least as strong and resourceful as he - they - any Luffy was. As the sniper wept while relating how he'd almost lost _his_ captain - _and_ his captain's adopted brother - Luffy's face fell into that deadly blankness that usually meant that someone would die for making him think. What he thought and what he did, however, were completely different.

"Sogeking has been trying to stay in your world 'cause your Kaya's alive. That ain't right."

"I know! Now tell him that!"

"It ain't right but I'd prob'ly do the same thin'. So would Sanji. Prob'ly most of the crew would, if just- If just ta know that Vivi was alive, somewhere. Or Zeff. Or Ace."

Usopp stopped his ranting abruptly. He knew that this Luffy spoke the truth; he knew, from the few glimpses he'd had outside of battle, that their world was diseased and shit-faced and palsied and **dying**.

He _knew_ that. He wished he could save them, but now that Death could find Monkey D. Luffy and, through his stupidity, locate Ace and Sogeking - chances had never looked slimmer.

And, as selfish as it was, he didn't _want_ to be split between two Luffys anymore.

He didn't _want_ to rely on Sogeking's innate courage anymore.

He didn't _want_ to have nightmares of Moria and his underground cavern filled with toxic waste _on top _of his own nightmares of Thriller Bark. Or horrors born of electric shock from two versions of Enel. Or terrors from being battered by two four-ton bats.

He just wanted there to be one of _everything_, so he could be sane again.

Yet, despite his desperate wishes for normalcy, for clean, sober, _not-_madness, he would be _damned_ - to Hell and back! - before he let his twin's dimension die without his say-so. Even if his twin's secret musings and guilty confessions were the same as his - that his captain didn't _really _need him...

"If I trust ya, Usopp, can ya help me - _us Vault-suits_ - get our Sogeking back? I think us Luffys need our sharpshooters - the _right_ ones - a whole damn lot more than we ever thought."

Usopp stared at the faint outline of the back of Luffy's head. Was this captain actually-? Could he really be-?

Hiding a small, tremulous smile, the sniper snorted and grumbled out an agreement. Wait till Sogeking heard this!

[~~~]

Zoro waited impatiently as Rozo and Sanji tried to pick up Luffy's trail again. At first, Sanji had been able hear Luffy's voice as his _Capitan _called out for the Vault-suits gun-master, but now they were forced to scour the ground for clues and sense where the young rubber man had bounced off to. It was annoying - annoying to know that Luffy still couldn't rely on them; wouldn't wait on them. Didn't trust their strengths to combine.

Sanji needed to pull his head out of that sort of thought. Luffy was what he was - impetuous and over-confident and prone to forgetting the others as his sheer strength powered him ahead. It was up to them to keep up, not for the _Capitan_ to wait up. Snapped out of his reverie, the Duck noticed something very odd about him - the darkness! It wasn't as suffocatingly dark as it had been a few moments earlier! His good eye darted around for the light source, which ended up being the last thing that he'd suspected.

"Oi, Madweed - _qu'est-ce que c'est_? Sometin' be lookin' wrong dere wid yer blade- "

Zoro grunted questioningly, then grunted louder in amazement. On his hip, his tribe's nanoblade was glowing, brightening by imperceptible degrees as Rozo picked up on Luffy's direction going forward and Orzo watched for the others that should be coming behind them at their garbled request.

"_Quelle merde!_ Is dat ting glowin'?" Sanji panted out, bent double as he resisted the urge to flap his wings - _arms -_ to cool himself. His shoulders burned where the glider's straps had dug into his flesh and his nose was choked with the smell of burnt feathers. His half-boots _definitely _had in a hole that exposed one of his already leathery flat feet to every pebble and thorn on the ground beneath them. His cigarettes were killing his breathing, but the nicotine pumped him up faster than the adrenaline roaring through his body; the combination'd made him feel like a damn mutant until they stopped to ascertain the trail.

"Dat's strange as hell, man," Zoro muttered as he pulled the blade from its clear casing. "_Wadou_, whatcha tryin' ta-"

"Run!"

The faint cry echoed through the chamber behind the two men. The very slight sounds of scrambling could be heard if they strained their ears - the voice had sounded like Doc Chop's.

"San... ...ro, ke... ...unnin'!"

"Dat be Nami's voice," Sanji stated with conviction, pulling out his 'special' cig collection - Madweed Bombers. The dangerous stuff that doped him high as a kite, but made his synapses so many times faster. His own creation. The Duck slipped one between his clenched jaw and struck a match with his ragged thumbnail. "_Fil d'salope, quelle merde font-ils _now?

"Son of a ho, bros, **move it!**"

"_Por favor, hombres_, run!"

And suddenly, Franky and Doc Chop could be seen bounding around a corner, led by B. Bones whose fleshless legs were a blur of motion. Robin was on Franky's back and Nami was scampering on all fours next to the reindeer - a form of running she detested unless speed was of absolute importance. Behind them, the gang's lieutenant and sergeant could sense something _big_ moving in the darkness.

_Eating_ the darkness.

"Fuck!" Sanji quacked loudly, grabbing hold of Rozo's hair and yanking him around to see the commotion. "Madweed, we'd best t'be gettin' da fix on da _Capitan, _**now**!"

The triplets' faces blanched, then Zoro was brandishing _Wadou _above his head. Suddenly, Sanji could see the way - a faint trail of blood with a half-boot print pounded irreverently through it.

"_Ici!_ Dis way! We got da trail!" Sanji squawked as he waved the others in front of him, before collaring the belligerent, self-sacrificial lieutenant in a ruthless headlock and dragging him along until he got the idea and ran on his own power. Cupping his hand around his mouth, Zoro tried to warn his captain and sniper of the danger, even if they were too far ahead to hear.

"**LUFFY! SOGEKING! INCOM-!"**

The horrendously loud retort of _Kabuto_ as it blew a large chunk out of the presence _so close_ behind the Duck's back set Zoro to wailing - his ears still hadn't recuperated from the sonic boom earlier. Even Sanji was brought to tears as his ears started ringing, almost drowning out the rest of gang's cheering and whooping. Despite all of that, nothing could stop them from grinning like lunatics as Luffy's voice called to them from the darkness ahead.

"Come on! We've got plenty more ass-kicking than me 'n' Sogeking can handle ahead - too much ta worry 'bout dis petty shit! Let's go, Vault-suits! I need ya _now_!"

And suddenly, despite the deep permeation of dread crawling up his back, Sanji was filled with joy - his captain finally, truly needed them! Nami's toothy grin, Zoro's howl of elation, Franky's loud sobbing, Robin's eager rustling of leaves, B. Bone's insane laugh, Doc Chop's lowing of glee - Luffy actually did need them! To be needed _at last_ by someone they loved so much made them ridiculously overwhelmed with an emotion they'd rarely felt in their puny, hard-scrabble lives.

Giddily happy, the Vault-suits ran on.

[~~~]

"_**Ow, ow, ow**_, zehahahahahaha! Dat waren't no leetly bee dat hit me, dat waren't, waren't it, Augie-boy. Almos' toooo bad I kiltcha already! Doan matter none doh - me's da **Void**. Dis be **my** world. Dat D. boy 'n' his gang be da last, den all da Wastes be mine!"

[~~~]

* * *

_**Author says:**_

French swearing time!

_Qu'est-ce que c'est - _What is this/that?_  
_

_Quelle merde! - _I'm hoping it still means "What shit!"

_Fil d'salope, quelle merde font-ils? - _"Son of a bitch, what shit are they doing now?"_  
_


	8. Chapter 8

"Soge- _Usopp!_ Got any clues as ta whut da hell dat was?"

Usopp shook his head as he kept his eye on _Kabuto's_ scope - a minuscule pinprick of green light helped him to mark and measure off distances. Ahead of them, they could still hear the Luffy-yet-not-Luffy voice screaming its challenge.

"Sorry, Luffy, I haven't a clue! We've never faced anything that...weird. At least, not yet we haven't. How's it looking back there, Franky?"

"Long-nose-bro, I'm not sensing any movement behind us," Franky replied as he agilely ran backwards while staring intently into the darkness; on his back, Robin's leaves rustled as she tried to sense any contrary movement.

"Captain, maybe we can take a break and let the others catch their breath?" she suggested gently, noting how winded the gnoll and the reindeer looked.

"Fine by me!" Luffy crowed as he pulled up short at the dryad's suggestion. Usopp gladly slipped down the rubber man's back onto the unseen floor as the others drew to a halt nearby.

Giggling, the Cajun cook exhaled large puffs of hot air and _Mad Bomber_ smoke - the deep, incense-like scent was already beginning to make Usopp feel a bit light-headed. The Duck was high as a kite, judging from the way he was leaning against the conjoined triplets - fortunately, Zoro and his brothers were far too winded to care at the moment. Nami's fur was plastered against her body as she and Chopper teetered on all fours before slumping into a sweaty pile that took B. Bones and Franky down with it. Robin leapt clear of the pile.

"So, Captain," Robin began as she negligently put the now-hallucinating Sanji's head between his knees before the smoke could act any further on his brain. "Exactly why are we still in the cavern? Other than the fact that we cannot go back very easily. And why is your voice constantly echoing throughout this place?"

Luffy groaned, clutched his empty stomach and moaned about rad scorpion kebabs and pig-rat chops.

"I see," Robin nodded wisely before throwing her captain a length of old jerky that had somehow gotten lodged in her leather vest's pocket. As he fell on the length of hardened meat like a jackal on a corpse, she turned to the sniper, who had rolled onto his back and closed his eyes.

"Sogeking? Or should I say, Usopp?"

Slowly, the marksman's eyes opened and turned to the dryad. Even through the slight frown, Robin could see a key difference - a great deal of sanity.

"It is a pleasure to meet you, Usopp - even if the situation could be better. Do I need to make introductions?"

"No, that's alright, Robin," he mumbled as he pushed himself upright using his elbows and forearms, then pulled himself closer to shake her outstretched branch. As he did so, _Wadou's_ light (_for the sword had begun to glow even brighter_) fell on his legs - or lack thereof.

Plainly visible to all was the mangled, useless state of his lower appendages - blood-encrusted, with toes badly bent backwards or snapped completely off. Bone was sticking out through what would normally have been his shins and lacerations had exposed the hard-earned muscles in his thighs. Before Usopp could squeak out an objection, Robin had him in the woody embrace of several branches while she stalked over to Doc Chop.

"Doc, **look** at his wounds! That fall must have-! And crawling in this cavern-! Is there _any_ hope he can walk again?" she hissed in her deadly quiet leaves-and-twigs-_scratchscratchscratching_-in-the-wind voice. Her branches were as dry and creaky as the trees on Thriller Bark, which only served to make Usopp panicky because after Thriller Bark had been Shabondy and after Shabondy had been...had been...

Doc Chop frowned as Usopp's eyes clouded up and gained a sheen of terror. The look was a wholly strange combination on the dark face that was more prone to battle-lust and a disturbing desire to die. Picking himself up tiredly, the reindeer trotted over to the sniper with a slightly revived Zoro in tow.

"Uh, Usopp is it?" the reindeer began nervously as Zoro helped him to pop some Rad-X and counteract his current shape. "You don't appear to be in any pain at the moment-"

"Can't feel," Usopp muttered, suddenly clawing the ground as Doc Chop's voice drifted into the background, swallowed by rushing air - _rush rush rushrushrusing_ past the sniper's ears. "Sky...sea...flying..can't _feel!_ Luffy, where is..Luffy where- _whereis__**he**__whereis__**he**__whereare__**they**__whereis__**he**__- !_"

Zoro smacked him. Twice for good measure. Usopp drew in a sharp breath and the familiar weight of _murder_ came back in his eyes - just briefly - before they became unfamiliar again.

Okay, maybe not as much sanity as Robin'd thought. Her musings were pierced by Chopper's continued visual analysis.

"This is horrible - beyond horrible! These wounds - your back! - crippled for _life_, even if I had a way to save your legs!"

Franky dragged himself from under Nami and B. Bones to conduct his own examination. His probing orbital units and digits found little to work with.

"Ain't no nerves in the back workin' 'nuff ta make a prosthetic worth it. I'd hafta attach wheels 'n' controls 'n' a whole load of stuff we ain't got, Doc-bro.

"Fuck a duck - no offense, Sanji - but what the hell did you do to Sogeking's body?" Doc Chop whimpered in sympathy as he carefully and tentatively probed the now-pulsating flesh.

"Other dan hijack da _merde _out uh it 'n' try ta _kill_ our gunner?" Sanji growled menacingly, his head now clear of the drug's effects. "I've a mind ta carve ya up, 'ceptin' ya saved da _Capitan's_ life."

Usopp growled himself, even while he marveled at his lack of fear - probably because he'd already met Death and found out that it was a withered man that looked a lot like Brook's former captain, carried a massive scythe called _The Grim Reaper_, was a bisexual pervert with a crush on Robin and liked a lot of liquor.

"It was your _fucking_ gunner and my _goddamn_ twin who locked me in a _shitty as ass_ rad-mask with that stupid...stupid prayer-magic of his! And he's busy leading _my_ crew to _my_ Luffy with _my_ almost perfectly fine body, so why don't you go chew _his_ ear off when we get there, huh?"

That got them to stop talking real fast - the silence was only broken by snatches of - the other Luffy? - telling something to bring back someone. D. Luffy was the only one moving as he snorted and brushed some dust off of his vault-suit with jerky-stained fingers.

"Whut he's sayin' is dat he was tryin' ta save _his_ captain's life - Monkey D. Luffy was it? - not so much mine. Seems like t'ings get a li'l..._mysterious_...when a person dies."

The other Vault-suits remained silent as they considered their simple-minded captain's serene smile and easy ability to accept such a complex thought. The Vault-suit leader approached Usopp where he laid on the ground and crouched by his head.

"Maybe's jus' better ta tell'em on the run liken' whut ya did ta me, huh 'Sopp?"

The sniper snorted, closed his eyes and grasped D. Luffy's strong, rough hand as the rubber man pulled him and _Kabuto_ onto his back once more.

[~~~]

As they ran, the air around them became positively _alive _with Usopp's story-telling. The weaving of his words brought shadows of despair and epic victories to the same startling, nigh-tangible brilliance (_why, they even saw their own battles cast side by side with the not-Sogeking's own in the very darkness around them!_), but there was a thread that ran through it all that the Vault-suits had never thought of before that day.

Teamwork. Unity. Strategic joint attacks. Combined defense. And, apparently, a bit less sex between the four younger males and Nami, with a lot _more_ sexual escapades amongst the three older members.

Robin was fairly certain that the sniper wasn't projected those salacious images. At least, not consciously.

D. Luffy looked at his gang as understanding dawned on them as it had for him. Whoever these Straw-hats were - even if they were just copies - they were light-years ahead of the Vault-suits on being a real gang. They'd never make it to Brazil if they couldn't even work with each other. That fact became even more apparent as Usopp's story changed to one of mental breakdowns under stress, fatigue, and guilt. Luffy's face hardened as he pointedly looked at each gang member. This was where they could be in a few hours - hell, a few minutes - if they didn't continue to learn to work together. Even he had seen that.

"So you believe that Death has lured your group here to take your captain and his brother, correct?" Robin summarized after the sniper finished his tale.

"Yep," Usopp confirmed, glad to see that someone in the gang might understand what was going on - Luffy had simple declared it all to be super mysterious. "See, me and Sogeking think that if certain people die in one dimension, it kind of...ripples out...to all dimensions. Some sort of balance. And _if_ Death is telling the truth, Ace is only alive in this dimension-"

"Nuh-uh," Luffy broke in with a firm voice. "Ace's alive in our dimension too. He's my cousin - I'd know if he was dead."

Behind him, Sanji elbowed Zoro and Nami fiercely glared at the others. No need to bring back up _that_ argument. If it kept their captain's sparse sanity to believe that the decapitated, executed body they had buried was _not_ his cousin, so be it. Usopp missed the signs, his thoughts spinning out wildly.

"That might explain why you guys got dragged into this too. Death wouldn't let any of Ace's versions off the hook, I bet. Plus, it looks like he was out for you for some reason, what with that tornado and...hrm, maybe _that's_ why he dragged in _my _Luffy...?" the sniper murmured distractedly before pounding the Vault-suits' captain on his shoulder. "Hey, Luffy! Maybe your Ace is in here t-"

B. Bones suddenly screeched to a halt, his bony hands to the withered skin flaps that were his ears. His hearing was well-acknowledged as being the sharpest in the gang's, with Doc Chop's a close second. It was easy for the ex-lieutenant to distinguish unique sounds, even through the racket that Usopp's captain was making.

"_Mierda!_" the ghoul hissed as his ears went tracking. "I think something's going to blast past us, captain. Something _muy_ _grande y muy, muy rapido_. I think it's traveling near the sound barrier."

"He's right," the doctor confirmed with a nervous squeak after a few more seconds. "Smells like the predator I was talkin' 'bout before too."

"Y'shittin' me, Bones-bro," Franky muttered as he ate one of Sogeking's clips to load his shoulder guns and repositioned Robin on his back. "If it's that fast, wouldn't that mean that by now it's in fron-"

Usopp's hiss cut the android off as he dragged his twin's rifle onto Luffy's shoulder frantically. The marksman's eye was soon stuck to Kabuto's scope.

"Just saw something," the dread-locked man gritted out from his clenched teeth. "Blur - black on black. Half a knot - er, one klick in advance."

"Sneaky, sneaky my bit- my laddies," Luffy mumbled as he crouched low and began to run on tiptoe. The others quickly followed suit, lowering themselves and slinking forward like ghosts in the dark. Still, it was slow going, even with _Wadou_ still raised high. It took ten minutes of spurts and stops to get half that distance, then Usopp was flagging them all down.

"Zoro, wrap that blade in your kilt or something! I need lights out!" he hissed, even as his eye retrained itself on the distant, nigh-invisible target in the scope. Grumbling about whiny snipers, the tribal acquiesced to the demand, smothering the greater majority of the brilliance to the mere incandescence of some mosses.

"My captain - _my _Luffy - is definitely up ahead. Seems like all of his yelling's gotten the attention of that...thing...that zoomed past us. We're going to do it like this," Usopp continued as his tongue poked out of the corner of his mouth. "When I pull the trigger, Sogeking and my crew will start running in to save my captain. We'll do the same and pincer that prick in between us."

"'S good plan," Nami approved while drawing her staff, "But how'd ya know where everyone is in the dark? 'N' how're ya supposed ta shoot the target with no light?"

"That's easy," Usopp muttered as he drew in his breath and visualized the bullet in the chamber. "I can _feel_ them in my heart - my eyes aren't for shooting, they're for quick spotting - Sogeking'll tell you the same thing. See, most of us close our eyes when the actual shot goes off, because we already know whether it's a miss- "

Usopp's breathing halted, air trapped in his ballooning lungs. Nobody noticed that they'd stopped breathing as well while the sniper became the bullet. Unawares, his voice dropped to the merest sliver of sound - virtually inaudible to their ears.

"or a-"

The hammer clicked loudly in the dead-quiet chamber. Somehow, like his twin's prayer-magic, Usopp made the moment draw out for far longer than it should have. The tension had built to a fever-pitch in every gang member's body by the time Usopp's rushed exhalation beat the report of the gun to their ear-drums.

"Hit! Let's go in hot!" Usopp screamed. With a roar, the Vault-suits took off like arrows from a bow, ready to jump into the fray ahead. As they pounded around the corner, Usopp let fly one of Sogeking's custom bullets from his twin's spare pistol, causing light to flood the room.

But the light was far more than it should have been.

"**Heads up! **_Meteorite Shower Flare!"_

"_Swallowtail Butterfly Meteor!"_

All hell was on the verge of breaking loose.

"_San Tou Ryuu Rashomon!"_

"_Three-Man Vault Door Opener!"_

Even in the middle of attacking, bewilderment flooded them.

"_Diable Jambe Frit Assorti!"_

"_A Side Of Cajun Fries!"_

Their minds were momentarily detached from the battle as they were struck nigh-dumb, their Waste-hardened bodies moving on autopilot.

"_Thunderbolt Tempo!"_

"_Lightning Storm!"_

Despite the calling of each deadly attack, both Straw-hats and Vault-suits were only one thing.

"_Coup de Vent!"_

"_Air Cannon!"_

It was an impossibility come true - something that Sogeking and Usopp had told them about - _warned_ them about. It had not truly been believable until it was finally seen with their own eyes.

"_Three-Verse Humming Arrow-Notch Slice!"_

"_Six-string Guitar Strumming Pick-Slash!"_

Every mortal there could only wonder at how alike, yet dissimilar, their dimensional twin appeared as they all performed virtually the same moves on the shadow-wrapped, malevolent largesse that had trained its wrath on the small, stretchy human that dared to stand firm in the face of any and everything.

And then, there was nothing but stasis.

[~~~]

Usopp's mind snarled futilely as he watched Death descend from on high, two ethereally beautiful women flanking him. If he could not see his captain tangled in the elastic limbs of his doppelganger, he would be howling in rage and anguish - he could sense that the attack that had been aimed at Luffy was meant to obliterate its intended target in one swift move.

"_Damn you, Death! Why can't you just leave us al-"_

"_Usopp, what the __**hell**__ did you do to my body?" _Sogeking roared in his mind. The twins were now locked with their fingertips barely grazing, which allowed the Wastes-born marksman to squirm partially back into his own body. _"Fuck me, I can't feel half of it!"_

"_Uhm, hello, we jumped off a __**bloody**__ cliff, in case you forgot while prancing around in __**my body!**__" _Usopp snarled back as he shoved himself partway into his own form. _"What'd you __**think**__ was gonna happen? It was higher than the tower in Enies Lobby, y'know!"_

"**Oh can it, both of you,"** Death muttered irritably while flicking his wrist. A great blanket of lassitude soon covered both factions' minds, forcibly quelling their growing questions and panic.

Thereby sticking the two snipers' partway into each other's physical container.

"_Oh joy!"_ both men sighed disconsolately before snorting at their similar mental gestures. Resigned, Usopp took the opportunity to scan his crew and see how they'd fared since he'd last been with them.

He tried hard not to tear up as he saw both Zoro and Sanji at full strength, muscles rippling in their arms and legs respectively as both men consciously tried to test their invisible bonds. Franky seemed to be enraged by the paralysis - he was trying his best to glare balefully at Death, which made the sniper wonder what exactly the entity had done now to piss his cyborg buddy off so badly. Brook looked nearly as resigned as himself, but there was a pinch of sadness deep in his empty eye sockets. Robin and Nami were both darting glances over the other crew - assessing weaknesses and strengths, no doubt. Chopper was trying his best to scan Luffy - both of them - for any injuries.

A flicker - two flickers - caught both marksmen's eyes. One was a brilliant orange glow, distinct in the darkness as it grew larger and larger. The other one was a sickly green that burned like the strange sky-lights he'd heard tales about from Sanji. The other light bobbed and weaved like a will o' wisp, chasing the orange glow that was hurtling towards the murky opponent that had yet to be revealed.

"_Dude, do you think-?"_ Sogeking asked, his eyes widening minutely as the orange fireball became visible.

"_That Ace can save us?"_ Usopp replied hopefully. _"He's just about the only person who can."_

And then Death cut that possibility off too.

[~~~]

"_What a friggin' kill-joy,_" Sogeking muttered nastily as Ace was carried into the vicinity of the battle on the tip of the _Grim Reaper, _ two unfamiliar figures following Death and the female entities that had tagged along_. _Usopp could only agree as the enraged being waved his withered hand and life returned to his limbs - only to have his body crash to the ground_._

"_Yes, of course, be __**gentle**__ with the cripple,"_ Sogeking grumbled as he tried to push himself upright. Usopp frowned and ignored his doppelganger - he had far more pressing issues to deal with, such as the remaining paralysis of his legs.

"_Sogeking, I think we have some feedback,"_ the pirate alerted his raider double. _"I'm having trouble controlling my-"_

"**Let's go now, chop chop! Death's quite cranky today, poor boy," ** a serenely menacing female voice boomed in both marksmen's brains. It was one of the beauties that had accompanied Death - the colorless, rainbow-clad woman known as Fate - who was speaking to them. She laid a cool, dry hand on each of their brows in a gesture that was so maternal that both young men were briefly reminded of their respective Banchinas.

Then the _blinding, withering, agonizing, heart-stopping rhythm of __**pain **_pounded on them both.

"**Oh, darn it. You're both twined around each other _so_ tight...oh. Oh dear. Looks like this one won't make it if I force you two apart. You're currently the only strength he has, pirate."**

Usopp couldn't respond other than to _shriek_ into the dark, the full weight of Sogeking's wounds being shared through their link. His twin _screamed_ at the same time, unable to compensate for the fire sizzling through his formerly dumb nerve-endings.

"**Apologies in advance - try not to go mad or die before I'm done."**

And then, with only a slight shifting of her fingers, it all became far, far worse.

[~~~]

* * *

_**Author says:**_

Editted for formatting failures, missing lines and minor grammar.


	9. Chapter 9

Sogeking was _free_.

Sogeking was _whole._

Sogeking was _changed._

He flexed his fingers idly while both Namis, the strange little brainy brat and the Entities started the negotiations. The leathery skin creaked very slightly as he closed fisted his hands - he'd have to use some of Franky's oils to alleviate that noise. It'd probably help smooth the cracks in the skin, though they sorta looked useful - maybe for climbing-

Sogeking felt an echo to his thoughts and looked up, surprised. Across from him, Usopp's head popped up, eyes wide and startled. The piratical sniper's hands were also closed into fists.

The doppelgangers gave each other a wry smile. Tentatively, Usopp's thoughts whispered through Sogeking's head.

'_Looks like we aren't quite rid of each other yet, huh?'_

Sogeking nodded slightly before opening his hands and slowly lowering his forearms to the table. He could barely feel the wood under his elbows - he'd need to ask Franky-kun how to correctly gauge the force needed to do these simple tasks!

'_It's so weird - I feel like I'm wearing some kinda invisible armor, but I'm not...'_ Sogeking heard Usopp comment as his curly-haired twin pinched himself experimentally. _'This is so cool!'_

'_Real warrior-like, Usopp-kun'_ Sogeking snarked, although he wore a small smile on his face. It was something that he noticed at times on some of the other raiders' faces. Their doubles from that other water-full, wonderful dimension all had a touch of naivete that was refreshing. It was obvious that their world hadn't ground the hope out of them yet. They also seemed to possess a ball of willpower that only grew stronger - even if they were currently weaker than their Waste-born, desert-hardened counterparts. In a year or two, that power difference could easily be negated.

"It's nice, isn't it?"

Sogeking glanced down at Doc Chop, a bit surprised to see a slightly bitter expression on the little reindeer's face. The raider medic had decided, with unusual vigor, to sit next to Sogeking and keep a close eye on him until the sniper's health met some predetermined expectations in his head. Now, the youngest gang member was looking up at him, eyes shiny. Nothing fell though.

"They - they got a chance we didn't have. It's like - like looking at what could have - no, what should have been. S'great, but...well yeah. I almost kinda wish they'd stay this way. That won't happen though, will it?"

Sogeking, for his part, was very glad to know this. He had a suspicion that he had a slight crush on his pirate brother, underneath a groundswell of protective instinct he hadn't felt since Kaya...

The pain radiated in his head, an almost audible cracking in his mind. _Nononoshitshitshit _he was not **supposed to remember this-!**

'_Shh, s'okay! Relax. Breathe deep- yeah, like that,' _Usopp crooned as Sogeking felt the other man's thoughts frantically smother the painful fires of guilt and remorse.

Once more, in that dark, windy little hallway where he hid his real fear, Sogeking found himself wishing that the two of them could stay together forever - like real twin brothers.

[~~~]

D. Luffy was physically present and accounted for as far as the Vault-suits were concerned, but that just about covered his interest in anything other than his current fascination - the darkly tanned, freckled person in the center of the room.

Ace. _Ace_.

The irradiated rubber man licked his lips and cautiously flicked an eye over to his gang - just a quick check to make sure that Sogeking was _really_ fine after all that screaming. Reassured by the altered sniper's frantic attempts to avoid Doc Chop and the reindeer's twin, he turned his intense gaze back onto Ace.

_So much like him._..

The hair was a little shorter, and the chest was actually more chiseled, but the face was so similar that he couldn't tell the difference unless he got closer...

So that's what Luffy did, wriggling and scoot over as silently as possibly.

He smelled good - so good! And _hot!_ Just like always.

How could this _not_ be his Ace? It _had_ to be him! If only he could get in those half-pants and check his slick slit...

He would be wet for him, right? Like always?

"Ace," Luffy hissed under his breath, chest tight with longing and need. Ace didn't seem to hear him, but his double did.

That Other Luffy.

That other one turned a dark, drilling gaze onto D. Luffy's face - it was all-seeing under that vapid expression of boredom. In his jealousy, it was all the Vault-suit leader could do to not split his face in his manic grin and bust this jackass' chops.

He was fucking marking turf on _his_ Ace! Who the fuck did he think he was-?

"_Lonely-lonely-lonesome-alone-no-one-but-ACE-IS-HERE-follow-fight-follow-fight-HE-SEES-ME-stronger-fight-stronger-FOR-HIM-stronger-fight-NO-TAKING-HIM-HE'S-MINE-!"_

Oh. _Oh._

The sheer solidity of that wall of willpower threatened to drop and crush him under the rumble of his dreams. Some part of his mind that still remembered fear sparked, trying to reconnect the damaged nerves. This - that other one - was _dangerous_ when roused, and he really didn't seem to know the meaning of the word, 'impossible.'

It made a weird sort of sense though. Obviously any sort of Luffy would be hopelessly attracted to someone as beautiful as Ace. Especially a lonely Luffy.

Most Luffys were probably lonely, come to think of it.

But no matter what, he _would_ get his Ace back. All it would take is one kiss. Just like that stupid old story Auntie Rouge used to tell them at bedtime. One kiss would wake up his Ace. And then, maybe he'd get some of himself back from the Wastes - enough to rescue the rest of his gang.

[~~~]

Now if only that old geezer in black would shut to fuck up and let him think! Yes, he knew he was Death - the old goat had let him suck his finger-bone while his mother gurgled her last - but that didn't mean that he had any more respect for him! His frigging rad-scorpion trick left his Ace hurt for more than a _week_, and he was sure as _hell_ unwanted when he cleaned up after Teach's rampage.

For some reason, the thought of Marshall D. Teach made Vault-suit Luffy crane his head up to regard the monstrosity encapsulated in a supernatural barrier. He quickly looked away as he heard his double start speaking.

"I can trade my life for Ace's and everyone else's!"

Yes. _Yes. _**Perfect.**

"Hey yeah!" D. Luffy joined in eagerly. Get that bastard-double out of his way _right__** now**_! "I think that's a great idea-!"

God dammit, he never remembered Nami's punch laying into his head like that before! And leather tasted nasty! Nasty! For fuck's sake, if they weren't his bitches - his _gang_ - he'd kill them for touching him when he was so _close_ to getting Ace-

Zoro's eyes burrowed into his own dark brown pair - it was the equivalent of five across the mouth. Duck had him under his wing in a merciless choke-hold as the entire gang followed Nami to one side of the cavern.

"What," Nami growled out as Sanji threw Luffy into a wall and Zoro pinned him there with _Wadou_ under his chin, "Is your _mother-fucking_ problem? _**You can't go dying on us!**_"

Luffy shuffled his feet, a bit sheepishly.

"Wasn't gonna _die. _Was gonna let that _Other _Luffy do mos' da work..."

"Wid all due respec', _Capitan_, _la belle mad'moiselle_ is right. Yer fuckin' up _plus grand qu'_eva before! 'N' since when d'ya let _quelqu'un fait merde pour toi_, ha?"

Luffy's eyes were cold. Blank. They were starting to cool to that evil mood that allowed him to trample weaklings under his bloody half-boot.

If only his gang was actually full of weaklings. He'd made the mistake of letting them know that he needed them as much as they needed him - now, they were milking this fact for all it was worth.

Come to think of it, Ace probably would've done the same. He couldn't understand what made people want to protect him so much - he was strong, wasn't he? Protecting his special people - that was _his_ job now, wasn't it? He'd have to remember to ask him when he got him back.

"Captain-bro, you's behavin' _real_ erratic," Franky added in an unusually emotionless tone. "T'ain't like ya t'all."

"Truly, Captain. Your emotions typically range from naive optimism to insane rage, with hunger and perceived 'disrespect' as the main mood modifiers," Robin concurred absently while studying the pirates across the cavern."

"Have we given you some offense, Captain?" Doc Chop inquired curiously - he was never sure of what would cause a shift in human emotions, and took to studying them as intensely as his medicines.

Luffy began to glare at his gang, still not backing down. Like hell was he just going to _give in_. B. Bones regarded him closely, then sat back and chuckled while he tuned his _guitarro_.

"He isn't even thinking about us right now, _mis amigos_," the skeletal ghoul added with a sour chuckle as he tuned his instrument. "_Podemos morir ahora_ and he wouldn't even notice. Well, not at first, at any rate.

The gang regarded the eldest member with the universal expression of puzzlement - all except for Sogeking, who continued to busy himself with his self-appointed chore. The maintenance of his unique weapon was a task he often used to calm himself after tense situations. Obviously, being forcibly transformed into a radioactive armadillo-man counted as stressful.

Nevertheless, it didn't make the priestly sniper oblivious.

"It's Ace, isn't it?" Sogeking interjected, not even looking up from where he was breaking down _Kabuto_ and cleaning her thoroughly. "You want _that _Ace, right?"

Luffy snarled hotly at his gunner, his eyes suddenly blazing to life.

"_That_ Ace be _my_ Ace! No-one's like _my_ Ace. He be mine, man! _**Mine!**_"

The raider gang was temporarily floored by the vehemence in their leader's voice, however the revelation finally sank into their heads.

Their captain was, indeed, in love with his cousin. Madly so. Deeply so. Insanely so.

Most of the gang found love - all-consuming romantic love, to be specific - quite foreign. Fucking Nami was more on the level of stress relief - maybe a perk of being in the gang.

So what if Zoro's face was horribly bleak and aged? So what if Sanji looked suddenly lost and small? So what if Bones' skull was peering at something invisible in the dark? So what if Franky had shielded his optical sockets with his opaque, protective lenses?

This sort of love was foreign to them - utterly so.

Sogeking's sigh broke the silence that had swallowed up the end of Luffy's words. It was heavy and old; tired and very unhappy.

"Luffy-kun," he muttered, and here the others knew to listen well, because very rarely did they call the captain just plain old Luffy. The sniper raised his head to capture his leader's burning gaze. "Luffy-kun - I can still read Usopp's mind. I'm pretty sure - no, I'm almost _positive _that the Ace in that room is not your cousin."

The two men stared at each other for long moments before Luffy, of all people broke it off. He bowed his head, his chin almost resting on the flat of _Wadou's _wafer-thin blade.

"Please? I...need to make sure on my own. I...I need...if he's _really_ not mine... Then I need to find that out my own way."

Looking back up, Luffy's eyes were dark, darker that caves, but glowing like toxic waste. It struck everyone that this young, over-powered boy-man was so very, very sick inside his own head and _he knew it_.

"God _dammit!_" Zoro hissed lethally as he pulled the sacred blade away and slid it back into its sheath. "You ain't gonna go 'lone in dis, capt'n. Not fo' shit! Nami! We get dis shitty sacr'fice choosin' ova wid. Now!"

As the others followed the triplets' lead, Bones clapped a hand on Luffy's shoulder.

"_Enviamosle, con Dios o Diablo_ - you choose who you need to make it work."

[~~~]

An opening. They had given him an opening. His heart swelled as he realized that his gang really would do _anything_ for him.

For a brief, brief moment, they even supplanted his memories of Ace's dogged protection. Only a very brief moment though.

Somehow, most of the others had taken up positions with their counterparts on the opposite sides of the table. In a subtle shifting of seating positions, they had managed to put Luffy right next to the dozing Ace. True, that Other Luffy was on the opposite side of Ace, but that was a minor issue - he appeared otherwise occupied by some story the vampiric ghoul was trying to tell him.

He moved closer to the delightful aroma of fire and skin and strength - all the scents that reminded him of happier times; of home and of security. His fingers clutched the table edge frantically, a vain attempt to resist the urge to kiss the freckles off that face and brush that rough-soft hair out of those blazing warm eyes...

Luffy's heart broke again as he watched Ace wake up. Long lashes fluttering against a slightly puffy cheek. Cat-like moans and rumblings in a long column of neck, Irregular heaving of breath through a slightly open mouth lined with plush lips.

"...hey there," Ace stated simply, only the slightest quiver in his voice. Oh, by the _Wastes_, it was too much for a simple, hormonal, ever-so-slightly psychotic teenager to bear. Luffy didn't know what he was saying, or even what he was doing. All he knew is that he'd lived without those lips for far too long; lived without that warmth, that essential, burning connection that he'd only ever felt before with his cousin...

And then he was waking up from a head-first collision with a wall.

He could hear his gang - everyone but Nami, to be specific - getting riled up, ready to kick ass for the blatant disrespect to their captain, only waiting for his word. They didn't worry that he might not be okay physically - at this point, it'd probably take one of the bombs from The End of All to do him in.

Or the sight of _his Ace_ with a dick. And balls. And nothing resembling a vee anywhere.

Luffy couldn't hear anything. He couldn't see anything but the horrid, horrid, horrid truth that his counterpart had roughly shoved into his face. It was all for naught. This was _not_ his Ace.

His Ace really was...really was...

His lips were moving, but he couldn't hear them. He was pulling out his security blanket, the shredded, leathery skin that he'd used to help him keep a grip on his slipping brains. He watched, vaguely hopeful, as the naked Ace watched the skin unfolding with wide eyes, eyes filled with some sudden knowledge.

Hope died when that Ace screamed, vomited and blacked out, rough, large hands twisted in black, tangled locks.

D. Luffy's mind began to spiral like a free-falling jet.

[~~~]

The immense bulk shook once as the irradiated man-boy's body hit the shielding. The power held in those elastic confines shivered through the casing.

The hulking creature took that shiver, absorbing it into its skin. It was rich with power - the sort of power that could split atoms or fuse gases. Yes, it would do quite nicely.

With slow, deliberate precision, the vast mass released the same shiver of power back out onto a minute dent in the encapsulating forcefield. The field flickered almost imperceptibly

_Oh yes._ It would do _quite nicely indeed._ The creature re-absorbed the reflected power, let it bounce around inside his cells for a bit, then spat it back out again.

[~~~]

D. Luffy watched, broken, as the vamp-ghoul spread the skin and started speaking again. He didn't know how he knew his Ace, nor did he care. At least _someone_ knew why he was so...so...

Luffy shuddered as another part of his mind broke away. He'd soon be floating, unattached to anything, no salvation, no support-

Scratchy. Something hot and scratchy and kinda musty-smelly. Smelled like...tangy. Salty like old sweat. A hat.

Peeking only slightly, D. Luffy watched as that Other Luffy sat down. He was hat-less. Was this his hat?

It felt...nice. It seemed to be holding his few brains in, for the moment. He could actually listen to his other self speaking...

And _ohbythesecretsoftheWastes_, he had not thought that there would be something worse than _his Ace_ being dead.

D. Luffy tried to imagine being forced to watch Ace die - watch the life leak out of the black, sparkling eyes as the head was cleaved from the body. Or maybe the head was taken afterward - an attempt to hide Ace's beauty.

The cord on his sorrow broke completely. That Other Luffy's words hit him like physical blows and it was all too much...too much. How was he supposed to _survive __**this **_when the threat of losing one of his gang members almost sent him off the cliff-?

A weight pressed against his back - it braced him up. The scent of salt doubled. He was being forced to rock, rock, _rock_ with someone. His other self. That Other Luffy would press, then collapse, so then he'd press, then collapse.

The meeting in their minds was even more profound.

That Other Luffy's tenacity allowed him to chase the broken fragments of the raider's psyche and mash them back into place. When the young boy went too far into his own memories, D. Luffy pulled him back out with a twist of raw strength.

Knitting and pulling and pressing eventually helped to patch the broken mind. Unexpected assistance came from the revelations of the vamp-ghoul.

[~~~]

His sweet Ace had borne a child. _His_ child.

He had created _life_ in the barrens that were the Wastes.

Even he, as crazy and loony and vengeance-driven as he was, had created something good! It filled him with warmth, as if Ace had come back - just a little! - to ease his pain.

And then, everything went back to the hell he was used to.

[~~~]

Ace, the Ace of another place and time and destiny, was waking up.

Howling.

Burning.

Slavering at the eyes of an enemy.

"_**Marshall D. Teach!"**_ Ace howled, the voice wavering insanely between octaves, sounding more like two people in one place.

D. Luffy noted in passing that this Ace's flames were filling the halls of his mind, sheeting Reason in abominable flames of unquenchable damnation.

It was more rewarding to see the same loss of sanity in that Other Luffy's eyes before fire covered everything.

[~~~]

* * *

_**Author says:**_

Translations for the masses! XD Please remember that the language is not supposed to be perfect, because the End of All kinda fucked the commonly held linguistics of the day, mmkay?

_Quelqu'un fait merde pour toi - Anyone doing shit for you..._

_Podemos morir ahora - We could die now..._

_Enviamosle, con Dios o Diablo_ - _We will deliver him, by God or Devil..._

Edits for grammar, wrong words and the inevitable errors of someone posting in the dead of night. :S_  
_


End file.
